The new chair of the Homes and Communities Agency, Sir Edward Lister, says it can help provide the public sector house building necessary to increase national housebuilding totals.
Lister, officially appointed to the HCA earlier this week, said: “The HCA can do a lot. It is going to do a lot with partners, also its going to do a lot to work with the new authorities being created across the country. Basically, we can increase the numbers.”
A government review is currently determining the future of the HCA, which Brandon Lewis said in February was to, “examine the continuing need for a non-departmental public body” and determine “whether each function and the body is still required”.
Lister described the HCA as consisting of three parts: a regulator of housing associations, a funder, and as a developer bringing government-owned land to market and developing that with partners.
“It is probably that last area which is the most important: because it’s all about building substantial numbers of homes, against the government’s target of 200,000 starter homes, and a million homes nationally by 2020,” he said.
Lister would not be drawn on whether any review could split up the different components of the HCA, and said the top priorities now were filling a number of senior positions, not least of which is the hunt for a new chief executive.
“That’s going to be one of the first tasks,” he said.
Chief executive Andy Rose, who was instrumental in establishing the investment function of the agency, stepped down last January. Mark Hodgkinson is interim chief executive.
“The second,” added Lister, “is there are board vacancies that need to be filled, and key executive positions that have to be filled, because it now handling very large sums of money, and because it is becoming a direct deliverer.”
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