Lockdown diaries: Homes England’s Nick Walkley

Nick Walkley is chief executive at Homes England. He shares his day: from elongated Zoom sessions and rough sleeper housing initiatives, through to an evening playlist courtesy of Tim Burgess. The last few months have been an enormous lifestyle change for me. Offices and partners from Cornwall to Cumbria mean a life spent mostly on the train. In fact, until 23 March my instant response to the question “what would make the biggest difference to the quality of your working life?” would have been “First class rail travel”. That’s now a distant memory. Despite the dietary benefits of no more Upper Crust train station baguettes, the absence of a morning walk either across central London or any other town or city has impacted on my general level of fitness. This morning (Wednesday, 3 June) I make it out for some exercise, and as I shamble around the suburban streets of north east London, I’m grateful for the lack of fellow pedestrians. It’s then straight to the home office. Truth be told, I think I had done fewer than five days of working from home in my entire life – with apologies to my first employer, the University of Liverpool, as rather than catching up on marking and research, I spent it watching The Simpsons and playing music a bit too loud (more on that later). At the start of lockdown, and much to my family’s chagrin, I slipped into staying on Zoom and Teams calls for long periods of time. It’s draining, can get dull, and may have driven me a bit mad. Being able to see your own image through a video conference is also faintly disturbing – my god, is that how I look in office meetings?  What’s been far more positive has been the response to our engagement efforts with partners. We have made it our business to ensure government is as well informed as it can be about the impact of Covid-19 on the sector – and the British Property Federation and Home Builders Federation, along with over 600 individual organisations, have responded incredibly well. By 9.30am I’m enjoying a challenging conversation about the issues the industry is facing with a chief executive of one of our partners. I am absolutely convinced that building as much market intel as possible is critical to ensuing the right support further down the line. I may have finally got used to not wearing a suit and tie but I haven’t fully weaned myself off the coffee habit, so with my third cup of the morning in hand, it’s time for our 11am Covid-19 situational report, or ‘sitrep’. These calls are part of a wider new structure we implemented in response to the pandemic with working groups made of up representatives from across the agency to deal with the challenges of Covid-19, which can then be escalated to leadership. While a top priority, we’ve also got a business to run and over 1,000 people to support and develop. Trying to do all those things with our existing governance would mean we’d do all three less effectively. Soon after I have a welcome call for new starters: a builder, a banker and a service designer. We’re continuing to recruit and onboard staff virtually, which means we need to pay even greater attention to ensuring everyone understands our values and mission. It’s energising to see the talent and commitment coming into Homes England. A quickly grabbed lunch slips into Whitehall work. While everyone is incredibly stretched, the need to properly brief ministers and prepare for committee sessions remains. In my case, an appearance before the Housing, Communities and Local Government select committee. The affordable housing team and support colleagues flesh out the likely line of questions and begin the process of drumming the latest set of performance figures into me, with Harry Swales playing the role of a persistent committee member throughout. It’s 3.30pm and time to don the headset once again. We’re working with MHCLG and Dame Louise Casey’s Rough Sleeping Taskforce to provide rough sleepers helped off the streets during the pandemic with long-term accommodation and support. We’re only a few days on from the announcement, but having worked with Dame Louise before, the pace we are now moving at is no surprise. The relationships we have with the sector and in local government combined with the skills and capabilities we’ve brought into the organisation puts us in good stead to play a key role in this work. It’s also provided a renewed sense of purpose for many as the long haul ahead becomes clearer. I’ve got the usual briefing and reports to clear down before I call in on some of the video drinks happening around the organisation. It’s great to see so many faces and hear what people have been up to, but it’s also a good opportunity to keep an eye on those I’ve previously caught setting their video backgrounds as my press photos. Before my turn to cook tonight comes the high point of lockdown life – Tim’s Twitter Listening Party and a shared online run through a classic album or two. There’s an amusing regeneration/real estate Twitter sub-group who are regular contributors. I’m not saying their choices have any influence on public policy, but the Spandau Ballet fans need to think carefully about their HBF funding applications.