Homes England has announced that its chair and chief executive will both stand down next year.
Between them, Peter Freeman and Peter Denton have led the government’s housing and regeneration agency for four years.
Denton leaves the chief executive role early next year while Freeman will hand over to a successor when the recruitment of a new chair is completed later next year.
Homes England chair Peter Freeman will leave later next year
An interim chief executive is set to be announced soon, in advance of a formal process to appoint a permanent officeholder.
Under Denton’s leadership, the organisation has refocussed on regeneration.
Denton said: “We successfully navigated the transition to being a fully-fledged and empowered housing and regeneration agency delivering strongly, especially in affordable housing, and initiating many catalytic regeneration projects throughout the country.”
Economic headwinds have seen its flagship affordable homes programme, which is overseen in most of the country by Homes England, repeatedly cut down from its original target of 180,000 homes to just 110,000.
>> Read more: ‘Good, but not perfect’ – What next for Homes England?
A public body review earlier this year endorsed Homes England’s role as the key delivery agency for housing and regeneration, while urging the government to give it backing to “be even bolder” by playing the role of master developer on more large regeneration and placemaking schemes.
Freeman he would “focus my attentions on my role as chair of the Cambridge Growth Company”, a position he was appointed to by former housing secretary Michael Gove.
The changes in Homes England’s leadership come after a change of government in July, which saw a major overhaul in national housing strategy, with a greater focus on building new towns and on parts of the greenbelt.
Denton said the new government’s ambition to build 1.5m homes over the course of this parliament would “require a leadership team with a time horizon extending beyond the period I had originally set for myself”.