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Homes England’s Peter Denton: Barratt master developer won’t get access to our sites
Homes England’s master developer with Barratt Redrow and Lloyds Bank will not get access to the agency’s existing sites, Peter Denton has said.
The chief executive of the government’s housing and regeneration agency told Inside Housing that the recently formed Made Partnership will “go out and buy sites” before bringing in small house builders to help with development.
Mr Denton spoke to journalists at the Homes England Investment Symposium in London as the Made Partnership announced its first development, Godley Green Garden Village in Greater Manchester.
The master developer will work with Tameside Council to build 2,150 new homes in the area, following the approval of outline planning permission in late 2023.
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Mr Denton said the partnership was about “getting Barratt back into large-scale master development activity”.
“We want Barratt to do things for the country rather than us do them,” he added.
One misunderstanding about the joint venture, he went on, was that “they don’t get access to our sites”.
“Made goes out and buys sites. And, secondly, it’s in our investment programme, so it’s open to all. We need to see the doubling of output by all house builders, not just the big guys,” he added.
The Made Partnership was announced in September as a joint venture between Homes England, Lloyds Bank and house builder Barratt Redrow. It will develop large brownfield sites and garden village-style communities of 1,000 to more than 10,000 homes.
Mr Denton said Made was “only an example of a much bigger theme, which is financial and operational leverage”.
“Roughly the same time as Made was announced, there was actually another one in the private sector done. We just didn’t talk about it,” he added.
The partnership follows recommendations from a government review that found Homes England should take on more of a master developer role to enable large-scale developments and placemaking.
“[Made] was in the offing because we knew that whichever party won the election, but [especially] if Labour won the election, there was going to be a big push for a number of homes, and we knew that we had to push on both financial and operational leverage.”
He said the partnership would give small and medium-sized house builders access to larger schemes and build supply chains for modern methods of construction.
Peter Freeman, chair of Homes England, added that it would help to set up repeat business. “It can then endure, as it has with the English Cities Fund [ECF] for 20 years,” he said. “Every year, the trust and the understanding and the mutuality grows… We need to create a few Mades to go with the ECF.”
On Monday 4 November, Homes England announced Habiko, another development vehicle, with developer Muse and the Pension Insurance Corporation. The joint venture will develop 3,000 rental homes with rents set 20% below the local market price.
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