Homes England has officially launched the National Housing Bank (NHB) alongside a new investment plan, which will look to deploy £16bn of debt, equity and guarantees to deliver 500,000 new homes.
The NHB launch event was held today (31 March) in Westminster, alongside the publication of a new investment prospectus, which aims to attract approximately £53bn of private capital.
The prospectus builds on Homes England’s recently published strategic plan and investment roadmap, and sets out the NHB’s investment principles, themes and criteria for partners as it bids to unlock new housing and mixed-use schemes at scale across the country.
It also sets out the bank’s products and interventions, including a range of debt financing products such as SME accelerator loans, equity investments including via private joint ventures and partnerships, as well as new guarantee products, such as sustainable investments.
NHB chair Peter Vernon said the bank will support a range of tenures including affordable and build-to-rent, for small, large and “complex” sites, while developing new financial products to ensure the bank’s longevity. This includes £2.5bn low-interest loans for social and affordable housing providers.
“The bank will be permanently capitalised, therefore it’s able to plan long term,” he added. “It’s able to invest long term. It’s also available to recycle its capital.
“The bank will have flexibility to co-develop new financial products with partners to meet what are inevitably going to be the changing challenges of the sector and the bank will have significantly increased delegated authority to approve transactions, which basically means quick decisions.”
Homes England has also announced the NHB’s first partnership, a £100m tie-up with Aviva to support the delivery of an initial 300-home portfolio across Liverpool and Manchester.
Vernon also said the bank will attempt to de-risk the “early stages of masterplanning, land assembly [and] infrastructure investment” in a bid to bring forward complex sites more quickly, while supporting SME developers to “build a pipeline and therefore expand their business”.
NHB chief executive Simon Century said: “We’re prioritising schemes that are well advanced, often close to delivery, but where progress has stalled because the financing isn’t quite working the way it needs to.
“What we’re doing is helping to make those deals stack again. It might mean sharing risk […] bringing in additional capital alongside existing investors, or it might mean structuring something differently so the projects, which would otherwise sit on the shelf, can actually move forward.”
Speaking to Property Week at the event, Homes England chair Pat Ritchie said it is “already in partnership with a range of other” developers and investors, including Muse, Barratt Redrow and Lloyds.
“That kind of track record of working with partners is something that we’ll build on within the bank,” she added.
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