From April, one of two closely linked funding platforms go live: the National Housing Delivery Fund (NHDF) and the National Housing Bank (NHB), a new subsidiary of Homes England. Together, they represent a significant shift in how public capital will be deployed to support housing delivery, and the most substantial reconfiguration of Homes England’s funding architecture in many years. 

The broader context is well understood; viability is now the principal constraint on housing delivery across much of England, particularly on brownfield land and on larger greenfield sites requiring significant primary infrastructure. At the same time, local authorities are operating with reduced capacity and constrained resources. The NHDF and the National Housing Bank have been designed with both realities in mind.

Digging into the details

The National Housing Bank is a designated public financial institution, operational from the 1st April and integrated within Homes England’s wider structure. The first of its kind, it consolidates what has previously been a complex landscape of separate funding programmes, bringing together investment capital for loans and equity alongside £5.5 billion of guarantee powers. The new bank can operate across the full capital stack, offering debt, equity and guarantees tailored to the specific circumstances of a scheme. Homes England’s Chief Investment Officer has described it as a four to five times increase in the scale of what the agency has historically been able to do, with a target of deploying £16 billion of public capital to draw in approximately £53 billion of private finance.

The NHDF, which will provide up to £5 billion of capital grant for land assembly, infrastructure provision, viability gap funding and site remediation, is expected to operate in a similar way to the Brownfield Infrastructure and Land Fund in terms of what it funds and the criteria it applies. Homes England is actively working with MHCLG and HM Treasury to establish the fund’s parameters, and is already progressing a number of projects in anticipation of the programme going live later in the year.

Why this matters for viability

Previous funding programmes, largely constrained by their grant-only architecture, could address viability gaps only up to a point. Where construction costs, infrastructure requirements or land assembly complexity pushed a scheme beyond what grant alone could bridge, projects stalled. That remains a defining feature of the current market.

What the National Housing Bank introduces is the ability to structure bespoke financial interventions across the capital stack, providing the kind of public-private risk sharing that complex regeneration schemes require but have rarely been able to access at scale. Schemes that have stalled because the numbers don’t work can now be addressed through properly structured debt, equity or guarantee solutions, deployed alongside grant where needed. This is a much broader and powerful array of financial tools from which to resolve entrenched viability challenges which we see as prevalent across the sector.

What is Homes England looking for?

Homes England has been clear about its immediate priorities: shovel-ready schemes in the short term, with an emphasis on maximising delivery of new homes now. For more complex or longer-term schemes, partners will need to demonstrate they’re doing everything possible to bring delivery forward into the next four years.

Six investment themes will guide Homes England’s capital deployment:

• significantly increasing social and affordable housing;
• diversifying the housebuilding sector with targeted support for SME builders;
• bringing forward more land and addressing viability;
• growing undersupplied tenures such as build-to-rent and senior living;
• supporting large-scale mixed-use schemes and urban regeneration; and
• driving innovation and productivity across the sector.

Across all applications, local authority partners will need to demonstrate a strong place-based vision backed by genuine political commitment, robust governance, a clear pipeline of deliverable and costed schemes, and evidence-based justification for public intervention. Homes England will also be looking for reassurance that the partner has the ambition, resources and governance in place to see a programme through.

A new kind of conversation

One of the most significant changes accompanying the new funds is Homes England’s new regional operating model. Rather than approaching the agency project by project, partners are increasingly expected to engage at a strategic level, articulating their authority-wide housing and regeneration ambitions and working with Homes England’s regional teams to develop a coordinated programme of investment aligned to local priorities.

The quality and maturity of a case matters now more than ever. Partners that can demonstrate a coherent pipeline, a credible delivery strategy, a realistic financing structure and a clear path from investment to homes delivered will be best placed to secure support.

Connecting funding with sites

We’ve been working closely with local authorities, developers and Homes England since 2018, helping to bridge the gap between funding opportunity and site-level delivery. Over that period, we’ve secured around £320 million of grant funding by preparing evidence-led business cases for complex sites across the country.

Homes England needs to understand that the place-level vision is coherent, that there is genuine political commitment behind it, and that the authority has a clear-eyed understanding of the delivery challenges on the ground.  Getting sites to a position where they are grant ready, and ensuring that Homes England has the confidence to commit, is precisely where Hive’s experience is most valuable.

If you’re preparing for a funding bid or need support building the strategic case for your scheme or programme, get in touch. We’d love to help.

Hive Land & Planning has secured over £320 million of housing and infrastructure funding for local authority clients since 2018.