Homes England has fired the starting gun on its new National Housing Bank, aiming to pump up to £16bn into housing and regeneration schemes and unlock projects stuck by viability and funding gaps.

The government-backed lender opens for business this week with a clear brief: de-risk developments, crowd in private capital and accelerate delivery across England’s clogged housing pipeline.

A first £100m deal with insurer Aviva will fund thousands of build-to-rent homes, including an initial 300 across Liverpool and Manchester, signalling the Bank’s focus on getting schemes moving quickly.

The National Housing Bank, a subsidiary of Homes England, is targeting more than 500,000 homes over the next decade while unlocking £53bn of private investment.

It will deploy a mix of debt, equity and guarantees to tackle the core barriers holding back delivery — including stalled sites, weak viability, and constrained lending.

The move comes alongside a new Investment Prospectus bringing together Homes England’s funding, land and delivery tools into a single offer for developers, councils and investors.

Aviva £100m funding deal

---

Manchester Moston Lane rental family home scheme

The Aviva-Homes England partnership has appointed Place Capital Group as its exclusive development partner, with plans to deliver up to 3,300 homes as funding scales up.

Early sites are already secured in Liverpool and Manchester, giving the first clear signal of how the Bank intends to convert funding into starts on site.

At Vescock Street in Liverpool, 135 homes will be built as part of wider ambitions to regenerate underdeveloped neighbourhoods across the city.

In Manchester, around 150 homes are planned at Moston Lane, with 36% earmarked as affordable, forming part of a broader transformation programme for the area.

The focus is firmly on underused brownfield sites in regional towns and cities — a segment where viability gaps and funding constraints have stalled delivery.

David Smith-Milne said: “Having secured major regeneration projects in Manchester and Liverpool to kick start this investment, we are excited about our continued expansion nationally to deliver much needed family housing in underserved markets.”

Housing secretary Steve Reed said the Bank would “rake in billions of pounds of essential private investment to get spades in the ground”, forming a key plank of the government’s 1.5 million homes target.

For contractors and developers, the big shift is speed and flexibility. The Bank has delegated powers to take faster decisions and structure bespoke funding packages — a direct response to long-standing complaints about slow approvals and fragmented public support.

Chief executive Amy Rees said the agency would step in where “market failures exist” to unlock delivery at pace, while Bank boss Simon Century promised it would act “as an enabler, not a barrier”.