By Keith Cooper

Steve Reed has certainly made an impression in his first months as housing secretary, with his Maga caps, build baby build bombast and willingness to rip up planning rules in London.

But to be a hit as the delivery man of affordable homes will depend more on his ability to sort out his ailing housing agency than making a big splash in the media or the capital.

Homes England stands out among the dozen or so agencies and public bodies under the wing of the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, over which Mr Reed presides.

But not for all the right reasons.

Despite the agency consuming a considerable chunk of the department’s multi-billion budget every year, it has been allowed for too long to operate without effective ministerial control.

As a result, in recent years, it has missed or scraped by on key housing targets, wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash on a botched “transformation” project, all while hiking expenditure on consultancy and almost doubling the size of its staff.

As reported in HQM this month, Homes England was forced to admit its £117m “Evolve” transformation programme “fell significantly short” of its aim. This admission came only after repeated requests through the Freedom of Information Act to release a damning review of its performance, which it eventually did.

Marginally more transparent is the series of “fruitless” spending and “losses”, amounting to £6.6m, buried away in the 192 pages of the ministry’s financial accounts for 2024/25. All of this waste is linked to the now abandoned Evolve.

Homes England’s latest annual report does flag its first drop in expenditure on consultancy for six years. This spend on outside advice had shot up from £417,000 in 2018/19 to £9.3m in 2024. And while it fell to £5.9m last year, expenditure on “organisational and change management consultancy” continues to climb and is up to £4.2m in 2024/25 from £2.5m the previous year.

Meanwhile, its staff roll call has almost doubled in size from 844 in 2018, its inaugural year, to 1,509 in 2025.

But despite this expansion, the millions spent and wasted on transformation, and rocketing expenditure on consultancy, Homes England has built thousands fewer homes every year than in 2019.

These damning indictments of its performance have painted a red target on its back and understandably so.

In March, the Guardian reported that Homes England could be folded into the housing ministry. And while that threat appears to have receded, months later thinktank Re:State called for it to be axed in a report. This polemic notably drew on the advice of a number of local government leaders, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham included.

You can see why mayors and regional authorities would want Homes England broken up as the government pledges to hand them more power over housing. Their eyes will be firmly fixed on its £27bn affordable housing budget and massive landbank.

Getting their hands on these resources would give mayors real power instead of the ‘hollow’ ones due to them under the government’s current ‘devolution’ proposals.

On the other side of the fence are current and former staff of the agency. They have their heads in their hands. They still believe Homes England has a pivotal role to play and marvel at what it could do with its resources.Can you imagine what a functioning private developer would do with government backing, a multi-billion budget and so many hectares of housing land?

On balance, the affordable housing crisis would be better served by Homes England being subject to radical surgery instead of the axe. With the housing crisis growing ever-more acute, it would be quicker and more effective for a housing secretary with gumption to get the agency’s act together rather than breaking it up for the mayors.

Ministers are often reluctant to get their hands dirty with the mechanics of their agencies. But if Mr Reed is as serious about affordable housing as he is bombastic about building, he should fix his ailing number one agency before it gives the increasingly powerful mayors even more ammo to bring it down for good.