Can housing delivery keep pace with the expectations of devolution?

Devolution has raised legitimate expectations for housing delivery across England. In many places, the foundations are being laid: Homes England is transitioning to a regional operating model, and local areas are purposefully building capacity and capability. But progress is patchy, with each Combined Authority area on its own, in some cases long, journey to developing a fit-for-purpose delivery system. 

Looking ahead, Strategic Place Partnerships represent a potentially critical mechanism for accelerating delivery. That said, we mustn’t mistake the mobilisation of partnerships for the creation of a delivery system. While necessary foundations of governance structures, project lists and pipelines are established, public, political and ministerial expectations have already moved on to seeing homes built.

Across places grappling with devolution, three issues come up repeatedly: funding mechanisms, delivery models, and tools & processes. They are deeply interconnected and they will determine whether devolution accelerates housing delivery or simply raises expectations without the means to meet them.

Funding mechanisms: integration matters as much as allocation

One of the most persistent myths about devolution is that it is primarily about who controls the money. In practice, what matters far more is whether different funding streams are aligned, sequenced and deployed coherently in support of place ambitions.                                                                                                            

The new funding and investment landscape creates both opportunities and challenges. Local control over the National Housing Delivery Fund will make it more straightforward for some areas to align and integrate funding decisions, a genuine step change in responsibilities. 

Alongside this, the emergence of the National Housing Bank (NHB) signals a move towards loan, equity and guarantee-based interventions, intended to recycle capital and support commercially viable schemes at scale. 

For places, this creates a mixed funding stack: locally controlled funds, nationally controlled programmes and investment tools, each working to different rules and timescales. The problem is not the existence of multiple streams, but the absence of effective integration between them. Overcoming this will be particularly important for local areas with weaker housing markets where viability gaps persist and creative approaches are required to unlock new housing.   

This is where SPPs can play a vital role in championing place-based strategy and business cases, helping places orchestrate the full funding mix, aligning investment, grant, land and capacity support so that one intervention unlocks the next. Embedding an effective interface between the NHB and local areas will be critical to success. 

The lesson is this: devolution without integrated funding strategies risks creating more complexity, not less, and complexity slows delivery. If senior leaders want devolution to keep pace with expectations, they need to treat funding integration as a core function of place-based working, not a technical afterthought.

Delivery models: capacity support isn’t a nice-to-have, it is the delivery plan

Despite the rhetoric around devolution, delivery capacity remains highly uneven. Some places have mature pipelines and experienced delivery teams; others are still building core housing capability alongside broader institutional change. 

Transitioning SPPs from their current strategy phase to a more distinctive role as delivery enablers will be vital. Harnessing Homes England’s long-built expertise means different things in different places: scheme-level support in feasibility, viability, master planning and commercial structuring, the work that turns ambition into investable propositions; place-wide pipeline development, helping narrow unfocused project lists into prioritised programmes; or, where necessary, a critical convening role, brokering agreement where governance is complex or relationships are fragmented.

Delivery systems don’t operate in a vacuum; they are shaped by ambitious political leadership and the strength of legacy relationships. Critically, local areas must be honest with themselves, ensuring they don’t let pride get in the way and be open and honest about their capacity and capability gaps, proactively seeking out support that meets their needs. Any barriers to collaboration should be lessoned as Homes England’s regional model beds-in. SPPs will need to draw on good practice from each other and develop more creative, integrated partnership delivery models, embedding support through commissioning arrangements, secondments or multidisciplinary teams. 

These are not optional extras. They represent the practical means by which devolution is made real. The uncomfortable truth is this: if you don’t have a delivery model, you don’t have devolution, you have delegated accountability without the means to act, and delegated accountability without delivery is precisely how the gap between expectation and reality grows.

Tools and processes: enabling the shift to delivery, not delaying it

Integrated pipelines have rightly become central to place-based working. They force prioritisation, support sequencing and provide a shared basis for decisions. Used well, they move partnerships from lists of projects to delivery plans.

But there is a shadow side. In periods of uncertainty, pipeline-building can become the work itself, with partnerships investing heavily in plans and governance while delivery remains distant. Two issues consistently hold places back.

First, data transparency and system integration are now delivery critical. Without a shared, trusted view of pipelines and progress, decision-making slows, opportunities are missed and confidence drains away. That is a delivery problem, and it directly erodes the pace that devolution demands.

Second, partnership governance structures must drive delivery, not simply create additional layers of process. Poorly aligned governance consumes scarce capacity at exactly the moment places need momentum. 

Homes England’s move to a regional operating model matters here too. Unless places experience a genuinely joined-up offer, across funding, expertise and delivery routes, even well-designed tools will struggle to shift outcomes. 

What this means for senior leaders

For senior leaders across local government and national agencies alike, the next phase of devolution calls for hard decisions:

• Leverage your Strategic Place Partnership. Make the most of the opportunity. The architecture is in place to join up, prioritise and deliver.   
• Don’t confuse mobilisation with delivery. Be clear about what will be delivered in the next 12–18 months, through which route, and who owns the critical path.
• Make funding integration a leadership task. If multiple funding streams are not aligned to a single place narrative and pipeline, delivery will stall.
• Be explicit about the National Housing Bank interface. How will local priorities be translated into investment-ready propositions — and how will investment sit alongside grant, land and enabling support where required?
• Be honest about capacity and clear with partners. Recognise gaps or weaknesses in capacity and capability. Be clear on what support you need and be open to new ways of working.
• Learn as you go and adopt good practice from other areas. Systematically measure performance – not just counting outputs but understanding how to improve – and share experiences with your peers to drive a shared culture of learning. 

Can housing delivery keep pace?

The honest answer is not yet. But the means to close that gap exist.

Devolution can unlock better housing outcomes, if integrated funding strategies are treated as a leadership task, not a technical afterthought; if delivery capacity is built deliberately rather than assumed; and if the full potential of Strategic Place Partnerships is realised rather than left on the table.

The expectations are already set. The system has the architecture. What it needs now is the discipline to move from mobilisation to delivery and the honesty among senior leaders, locally and nationally, to call out where that isn’t happening fast enough.

Speak to us

Steer Economic Development supports places in turning housing ambition into deliverable programmes through integrated funding, delivery strategy and place-based planning expertise. Contact us to discuss with the team.