New Homes England boss tells Inside Housing how and why the agency will need to evolve

The interview came after a report in The Guardian on Tuesday which suggested that prime minister Sir Keir Starmer could fold Homes England into MHCLG, giving ministers more direct control over housebuilding. When pushed on this, Mr Boylan twice said: “We don’t comment on speculation”.

But asked if the government’s direction of travel is to devolve affordable homes programmes to combined authorities and away from Homes England, he said: “Evolution of devolution is a thing. Will we need to evolve in that context? Of course we will. 

“Am I in a position right now to stare into my crystal ball and tell you exactly what that will look like in all these different places – which are at very different stages of their development, very different levels of maturity, very different levels of capability and capacity? My futurologist skills don’t extend that far.

“Yes, we will need to evolve. Yes, the landscape will change. Yes, we need to adapt as that happens.”

Mr Boylan was appointed interim chief executive of Homes England in January following the departure of Peter Denton. “It’s a great team,” he said. “As I’ve said to them, we have all the skills that we need to move forward, but there’s work to do to make certain that we’re responding to the requests and requirements of government in an evolving and devolving landscape.”

Mr Boylan said he sees Homes England as being “pretty fundamental” to the government’s ambition to build a series of new towns once the sites are identified.

“If I might be so bold as to say perhaps we could, subject to ministerial agreement, be asked to incubate some of those new town settlements as they are emerging and coming forward,” he said.

“There will be a need for dedicated delivery models, and development corporations are an obvious one… but that can only kick in at a certain point, and there may well be significant amounts of work around land assembly, around derisking, that will need to take place in advance of those bodies being set up. And that’s where I see potentially a significant role for Homes England.”

A housing veteran, Mr Boylan helped to set up Homes England’s predecessor, the Homes and Communities Agency, with the late Lord Kerslake in 2008. Reflecting on how the role of the agency has changed since then, he said: “It’s become more complex, I think it’s fair to say. The guiding principle that we used – that Bob [Kerslake] created – was that we should have an agency that was capable of having a single conversation with a place about that place’s priorities in respect of housing and regeneration. That’s very much where I want to move us back to.”

He admitted that the complexity of the programmes Homes England runs and its different funding models can make it appear to external partners that the agency is “sometimes difficult to deal with”.

“We just need to simplify all of that and make certain that we are empowering regional leaders to have meaningful conversations with regional political leaders, and then enable the agency to align or define them to deliver those objectives,” he explained.

On what it was like to be asked to return to the agency in the top job, he said: “It was very flattering. It was completely out of the blue, but it was an invitation that I felt I couldn’t refuse. Partly given the history, the sense of loyalty to the organisation that I’ve had since the very beginning, but also a desire to help the government achieve on its extremely laudable ambition of housing growth”.

Mr Boylan’s 42 years of experience in public sector roles include stints as chief executive of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Transport for Greater Manchester and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council. He also served as deputy chief executive of Manchester City Council, where he led the regeneration directorate.

“I’ve got a lot of experience of working in a context where place is the most important thing,” he said.

“You can’t run a combined authority on the basis of a series of projects. You need to understand the interconnectivity.” At Homes England, he said, he can help to influence other agencies across the government in how they might play a role in a “joined-up approach to delivering the aspirations of places”.

Last year, Homes England launched a master developer, Made Partnership, with house builder Barratt Redrow and Lloyds Bank, following the recommendations of an independent report into the agency.

“We see master development as being an important tool in the armoury, and one which we will probably seek to deploy more as we move forward,” Mr Boylan said.

“Where it is appropriate for us to step in, take that role in order to derisk locations, to then enable private sector to intervene, we will.” The complexity of land ownership in an area is a key factor, he added.

The current Affordable Homes Programme, shared by Homes England and the Greater London Authority, has had its targets revised down and now looks set to underdeliver on its initial target by 50,000 to 70,000 homes.

Reflecting on the lessons learned, Mr Boylan said Homes England needed to build flexibility into its programmes to respond to changing circumstances where, for example, “assumptions around grant rates might need to be revisited”. Likewise, he said, the agency should have the freedom to deliver the right tenures for each area, whether that is social rent or affordable rent.

Mr Boylan said the government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, published this week, “can have a significant impact” on housebuilding, but “if I’m being frank, I’m not a subscriber to the theory that the only thing that’s wrong is the planning system”. 

He added: “Refining the planning process in a way that enables it to be more speedy and more predictable is fine, but I would [want] to see the ability of capable local planning authorities retaining the influence they need to be able to shape their places.”

Two years ago Homes England announced a pivot back towards regeneration and opened up grant funding for replacement homes. Will the Labour government, with its 1.5 million new homes target, now redirect the agency back towards additionality at all costs?

“It’s not a binary choice,” Mr Boylan said. “Yes, regeneration and placemaking is going to be important to us moving forward, but we need to be very, very clear that if we are going to create sustainable places and we’re going to create sustainable local economies, we need net additionality.”

Mr Boylan, who has retired then been pulled back into the housing world twice already, sees his current position as a temporary one, but he wishes to make a big impact.

“I’ll be here for a period of time,” he said. “What I want to try and do is make certain that I’m helping to lay the foundations for a secure, long-term future for the agency. So I wouldn’t want to put a date on that.”