Will it be all change at Homes England?

EDITOR’S COMMENT There are two camps when it comes to Homes England. I speak to a lot of people who absolutely love working with the agency, that credit it with enabling them to push forward with their development plans and to actually get going. Then there are those who are incredibly frustrated with the agency for not doing enough, for not being enough of an engine and for not having enough power or clout. Those messages come from inside and outside of Homes England and from past and present players. So when news broke last week that the Peters – Messrs Freeman and Denton – were calling it a day after four years jointly running the agency – a ripple of intrigue went through the industry. What will this mean for the agency? Who has called the shots? Who will step in? EG revealed late last Friday afternoon that long-time public servant and super-experienced interim chief executive Eamonn Boylan would be stepping in to take over from Denton while a permanent replacement is found. The move will be a return to Homes England for Boylan. He was deputy chief executive of it for two years from 2008 and was tasked with running around the country pumping cash into schemes to try to get the housing market back up off its knees. He will undoubtedly bring something different to Homes England than the incumbents. He is a public sector man through and through and a fully fledged Northerner, entirely adopted by the Greater Manchester region he has served for most of his 40-plus years in the public sector. Bread and butter Boylan has been credited with playing a seismic role in the growth of the Manchester city region and of being a man who is in the sector for the change he can make, not for the money or title. Regeneration matters to Boylan. Making places work, understanding the importance of infrastructure – among his many senior roles is chief executive of Transport for Greater Manchester – in developing communities. These are all bread and butter for Boylan. That’s the job. From those who know him, he’s a doer. He finds out what matters and then finds a way to get the important stuff done. The leadership at Homes England was always going to change with a new party in charge. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook were always going to want a change of guard, to get their people into the agency rather than those who had served the previous administration. No matter how well they might have performed, those matches had been burnt. We have already seen from Pennycook that he wants a Labour Homes England to do “everything in its power” to deliver on the 1.5m homes government has promised. In a letter to outgoing chairman Peter Freeman last month, he laid out seven clear priorities for the agency and some very clear expectations. “Your primary responsibility is to ensure Homes England delivers the mandate set by the deputy prime minister,” he wrote. “We expect you to support the board in bringing expertise, support and challenge to the chief executive and the wider executive team, to ensure the organisation continues to deliver its programmes and overall objectives.” Mission remains While Pennycook has said the two main objectives of Homes England – boosting growth through the delivery of new housing supply and place-based regeneration and placemaking – would not be changed, he does have more expectations of the agency, including speeding up delivery of large sites and becoming a more powerful lever for regeneration. Calls for a restructure and reset of Homes England have been made by various members of the industry over recent years, with an amplification of those asks over recent months. The agency, with the right powers, has the opportunity to unlock and de-risk huge swathes of the UK, which means getting the right new leaders in place will be key if Rayner and Pennycook want to stand tall on their promises. Boylan will have to lead the way with purpose from 15 January. Whoever succeeds him will have to do so much more.