Homes England is pushing for third AHP top-up, senior official says
A senior figure at Homes England has said the agency is urging the government to provide a third top-up to the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) to tide landlords over in 2025-26.
Gareth Phipps-Williams, assistant director of AHP management at Homes England, said that extra funds are essential if the government is going to meet its 1.5 million homes target.
“The Spending Review is always going to be about committing funding from 2026-27 onwards,” Mr Phipps-Williams said.
“We absolutely need a top-up again that goes through 2025-26, so we’re continuing to push for that. We know that it’s the best way to get the programme up and running really strongly.
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“If we stand any chance of really helping to boost the numbers for 1.5 million, we absolutely need to have a really strong start, particularly those starts in 2026-27.”
The AHP has received two funding injections in recent months, a £350m boost in February and a £500m top-up in October 2024.
Mr Phipps-Williams, speaking at the National Housing Federation Housing Finance Conference, said he was unaware of the final details of the next AHP, but that the overall target of 1.5 million homes was “quite ambitious”.
He also emphasised that the sector should get in touch with Homes England as much as possible to see if there are ways to unlock schemes.
“Talk to us, particularly if there are any issues slowing down the schemes in these last couple of weeks [before the end of the financial year],” he said.
“We may be able to help through our normal waiver process for utilities and Section 278 [for changes to the highway network], and we can also help reforecast your schemes.”
Mr Phipps-Williams added: “We’ve been able to secure the extra money from government because we’ve been able to show we’ve got a really strong pipeline of delivery, and that strong pipeline of delivery is meeting their strategic priorities – particularly social rent.”
Responding to a question on whether the deadline for starts on site could be extended, the assistant director said it depended on the size of any future top-up.
“If there’s another £200m, then we know there’s stuff in the pipeline that can deliver in the current timeframes,” Mr Phipps-Williams said.
“It’s really difficult for us to make that case to extend [the deadline], but we know that there are a lot of schemes out there that with a bit of an extension to timelines, we can get over the line and we can get delivered.”
He explained that the agency had been “particularly focused” on another top-up so there are enough starts on site to deliver completions by 2028-29.
“It’s all going to count towards that 1.5 million, regardless of when you started on site. That’s the case we’re making,” he stated.
Inside Housing recently met up with Eamonn Boylan, interim chief executive of Homes England, who said the agency would need to adapt to the “evolution of devolution” and take on a greater role as a master developer.
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