‘I’ve met seven housing ministers, one of them twice’: the head of Homes England on the battle to build

Peter Denton, the chief executive of Homes England, is used to meeting housing ministers. “If I count one twice, he is the eighth housing minister I have met,” he says, referring to Matthew Pennycook, the new man in the role.

There have been 16 entrants on the housing minister merry-go-round since 2010, and since Denton joined Homes England in August 2021, the churn has been particularly high.

But the man who leads the government’s housing delivery body was pleased to find the new Westminster incumbent across his brief, as Pennycook had spent two years as shadow housing minister before Labour’s election victory.

“My first meeting [with Pennycook] was very different to the others; I didn’t have to explain what Homes England was. It was more like: ‘Hello, Peter, this is what we are trying to achieve, can you make that happen?’”

The ambitions are lofty: Labour has promised to build more than 1.5m homes this parliament – a step up in pace on the 234,000 homes built in 2022-23 – and deliver the biggest boost to affordable housing in a generation. As the government’s housing and regeneration body, Homes England will be key to this, despite its relatively low profile.

The main role of the agency, which employs nearly 1,200 people, is to bridge the gap between public and private sector to deliver housing and regeneration schemes.

This could be through investments to unlock land; funding new infrastructure, such as transport schemes, schools, healthcare centres and new utilities, to open up opportunities; or delivering grants to support the construction of new homes, for example through its £11.5bn Affordable Homes Programme. In the last five years, Homes England has spent nearly £24bn on building homes, unlocking housing capacity and helping people into homeownership. This includes funding the start of 207,000 new homes.

Denton is speaking days after the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, set out her plan to hit the 1.5m homes target . These include new mandatory housing targets for councils and a plan to review and release green belt land for development.

Denton appears impressed so far, describing the proposals as “detailed” and “really credible”.

“You can suddenly understand that this isn’t sort of tokenistic message politics; it’s a really thought-through theory of change,” he says.

But Denton’s motivations are deeper than just building new homes. “Everyone should have a mission, and for me it is getting the 146,000 kids out of temporary accommodation,” he says.

Denton’s drive is clearly personal. Growing up in Edinburgh with his two brothers, they moved around with his mother. “We didn’t quite sofa-surf, but we weren’t exactly secure in home personally for a few years,” he says. Despite this, he says his mother “made it feel like an adventure, and I never felt stressed. I never felt how so many of these people must feel today.”

Denton would go on to study economics at Saint Andrews and become an accountant before moving into the world of property finance, initially at Deutsche Bank.

You create a vision, a master plan, you get online planning consent, you put some infrastructure in and you de-risk it

Peter Denton on Homes England’s role

During his near 30-year career in financing real estate, he spent time in senior roles in BNP Paribas and Barclays Capital, and as a partner at US private investment firm Starwood Capital.

But then, with many options in the finance world open to him after Starwood, he took a “more than material” pay cut to become chief financial officer at Hyde, a 50,000-home housing association.

Despite peers questioning that decision, after two years he was promoted to chief executive, and then picked to lead Homes England three years ago.

“If I reflect on all of the places that I have been, it’s been about growing and making something better – not deliberate, but it is what I’ve ended up doing,” he says.

When we meet near Spitalfields market in east London, Denton, a self-confessed history buff, litters our conversation with historical facts, pointing out buildings that housed Victorian women’s refuges, and bollards that were originally cannon in Napoleonic times.

He also has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the 20 regeneration projects Homes England is involved in. He picks out the £1bn York project as a good example of the work it is doing.

The project, near the city’s railway station, is a partnership between Homes England and Network Rail and will deliver 2,500 homes and 93,000 square metres of commercial space. Homes England has helped unlock the land and invested £135m in infrastructure to make the scheme viable.

This is part of its “20:80 strategy”, whereby Homes England puts in 20% of investment and work with the aim of opening up 80% for the private sector. “You create a vision, a master plan, you get outline planning consent, you put some infrastructure in and you de-risk it [for the private sector],” Denton says.

Homes England’s remit is even broader. It also manages the £18.9bn help-to-buy loan book.

This came under scrutiny last year, when some customers were forced on to extortionate variable loans of up to 9% after Homes England customers were hit by delays in trying to sell or remortgage their homes .

Denton says the organisation was hit by a “perfect storm”, bringing in a new contractor to manage the scheme at a time when many people’s mortgages were expiring. He says that call waiting times have dropped “drastically” and all email backlogs have been cleared.

But it is delivering homes that Homes England will ultimately be measured on, and it has faced challenges in recent years.

A Public Bodies Review of the organisation in April found it had materially under-delivered on housing in the last three years, particularly in 2022-23, when the 37,715 homes started were 30% below target.

Denton says that this was largely affected by economic factors, such as the invasion of Ukraine and Covid-19.

He also describes how, in the week after 2022’s disastrous mini-budget , he got calls from several housing associations confirming that they would be withdrawing more than £300m in planned investment.

“They were saying: ‘My cost of debt just doubled overnight, our pension funds have nearly gone to the wall, cost inflation has increased by 30% for us over two years, and we have a rent cap; we are not taking risks any more,’” he says.

The picture has since improved. Last year, Homes England aided the start of construction on 35,000 homes, 6% higher than its target. With Labour committing to turbocharge housebuilding, that will need to be just the start.

CV

Age 53

Family “Amazing coffee-addicted French wife and twin boy and girl, 16 years old.”

Education Six primary schools; one comprehensive; economics at St Andrews University.

Pay £295,000-£300,000.

Last holiday Train from Budapest to Paris for his wedding anniversary.

Best advice he’s been given “People only do business with people they like.”

Biggest career mistake “A long time ago I let myself be defined only by my career. That is a lonely place.”

Phrase he overuses “God loves a tryer.”

How he relaxes “My wife is a gardening widow.”