Homes England launches £16bn National Housing Bank

Headquartered in Leeds, the public financial institution will provide flexible capital to housebuilders, developers, investors, and registered providers to support the delivery of more than 500,000 homes.

Speaking at the launch event in London on Tuesday, Homes England made the case for partners to come on board and bolster the £16bn of public funding available from the National Housing Bank, which chair Pat Ritchie described as a “generational step change” for the residential sector.

The National Housing Bank will be able to pull from that £16bn financial capacity and help bolster development by providing debt, equity, and guarantees. The bank should help unlock more than £53bn of private investment over the next decade, according to Homes England. It will do this by targeting viability gaps, including stalled sites, SME builder constraints, and the need for upfront infrastructure funding.

Positioning the institution as a vehicle to unlock stalled schemes and scale up delivery, Homes England chief executive Amy Rees made a direct appeal to the market: “Our message today is straightforward – a rallying call… If you are an institutional investor, we’re open for business. Come and talk to us.”

She added: “If you are a registered provider, a developer, a housebuilder, we are here to help. Together, we now have the tools and firepower to face into the challenges that exist in the market.”

That being said, National Housing Bank chair Peter Vernon emphasised that the bank will focus on making the unviable viable.

“We’re not here to substitute for investment that will happen anyway,” he told the room. “We’re here to leverage investment that would not happen without us.”

Aviva is the first to benefit from the NHB, agreeing an initial £100m commitment to deliver 3,300 rental homes – including 300 in Liverpool and Manchester.

Housing secretary Steve Reed also got behind the NHB, stating: “Launching England’s first-ever National Housing Bank underpins a new way of doing things as we accelerate housebuilding at scale and tackle the housing crisis head on.”

Homes England chair Pat Ritchie added: “The National Housing Bank directly responds to calls from the housing sector, mayors and local leaders to increase the scale and flexibility of available public and private finance for housing and regeneration, to build the homes and communities our county needs.”

NHB’s offerings play a large part in the Homes England Investment Prospectus, which was published today.

The document outlines how the government agency can deploy its resources to enable housing and regeneration delivery, as well as its current investment strategy for the up to £46bn it has access to from national government over the next 10 years.

Homes England’s Rees described the double launch of the investment prospectus and NHB as “a watershed moment and mark an unprecedented scale of ambition and investment to deliver homes and regeneration across the country”.

She added: “The investment prospectus is explicit about the challenges facing the housing system, including affordability, viability, stalled land, constrained finance and delivery risk. Homes England and the National Housing Bank will step in where those market failures exist and help unlock delivery at pace.

“Our message to partners and investors is a simple one: please get in touch and talk to us. We are open for business and are committed to shaping the right solutions for a place or project.”

The launch of the NHB is the latest in a flurry of announcements regarding housing delivery support from the government. The Department for Transport announced a £165m Growth and Housing Accelerator Fund earlier this week, which is geared towards delivering infrastructure to unlock stalled sites. Earlier this month, the £1.5bn Housing Acceleration Fund was revealed by the Treasury. This fund is for strategic mayoral authorities to bid from to support residential development in their areas.