“Homes England is good, but it is not perfect”. You won’t find this line verbatim in the organisation public bodies review, but when report author Tony Poulter says it to Housing Today on the day of its publication earlier this month, it is hard not to feel he has summed up it up pretty neatly. 

The review was not launched after any crisis – every department is meant to review its arms-length bodies every five years – but it is Homes England’s first since 2016 and comes nearly a year after it launched its five-year strategic plan, a major landmark in the 1,415 person-strong organisation’s slow pivot away from pure housing delivery and towards regeneration.