Given the uncertainty swirling around Homes England at the moment, you might expect Stephen Kinsella, the housing quango’s chief land and development officer, to look worried. However, the former Barratt exec, hired in 2017 to sharpen up the organisation’s land buying and procurement activities, certainly gives a good impression of looking relaxed and confident.

Speaking over MS Teams from his home in Blundesland, just north of Liverpool on 8 April, Kinsella has just got over the hump of the financial year end, and maintains the £2bn-per year spend agency has had a better year than anyone had a right to expect when coronavirus shut the market a year ago. Talking in his characteristic Norris Green scouse, he says Homes England will even have exceeded some of its targets when figures are released, despite much of the housing industry being closed for the best part of three months. “In the first quarter we were worried, like everyone else, when the housing market closed, because we’ve got a business to run here. [But] we’ve had a really successful year,” he says.

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