Homes England boss hurls jibe over developer bully tactics

Homes England chief executive Nick Walkley has used colourful language to make clear the body will only work with developers and contractors that prioritise diversity, sustainability and inclusion.

Speaking at the Bristol Housing Festival yesterday, Walkley said that government housing quango Homes England would not work with “tossers”. He said the body prioritised fairness and diversity and would not tolerate an approach from partners that wanted to “bang the table” to get things done.

“We’re an organisation that cares passionately not only about our own people but about the people we work with,” Walkley said. “There’s a simple way of describing this, [which] is I don’t work with tossers.

“Because we don’t have time for it. These are complex problems that require subtlety and compromise, not simple problems that simply banging on the table and demanding what you think is right will resolve.”

He said: “We care about diversity, we care about inclusion, we care about sustainability we care about fairness. We write these into our job descriptions and we want people to share our values so we can change the nature of the industry that we deal with.”

Homes England spends around £10bn a year on its various capital programmes, which include Help to Buy as well as funding for affordable housing and investment in individual large projects. It has a number construction and development frameworks, which include mainstream housebuilders, housing associations, bespoke developers and contractors.

Walkley also touched on the organisation’s £90m deal with Japan’s largest housebuilder Sekisui, and developer Urban Splash, which is set bring Japanese modular construction methods to the UK. The body has backed the deal between Urban Splash and Sekisui designed to produce up to 2,000 customisable modular-built homes each year.

Walkley said he recently visited the Toykyo production facility of Sekisui, which builds more than 40,000 offsite homes every year. “There is a different version of this industry that already exists elsewhere in the world,” he said, adding the firm had already built over 40,000 carbon neutral houses in its home country. “A world in which 5,000 homes are produced every year in one facility, every single home designed with the consumer to their needs and their life choices.”

However, Walkley said the planning system would have to adapt in order for Sekisui’s system to take off, because of the extent of buyer customisation that is typically allowed, including whether purchasers want a two- or three- or four-bed home. “A profound shift in the nature of the conversation with regulators themselves about homes, how they look, how they work. I think it’s incredibly empowering and democratic.”

He said this would be challenging, but “doable” under the current system.