Is it a bird? Is it a plane? no, it’s superagency

The narrow office on the seventh floor of the unassuming office block at the top of London’s Tottenham Court Road looks as though its occupant, the new acting chief executive of the Housing Corporation, doesn’t quite belong. There is a simple desk pushed against the wall with a computer on it; there is a solitary map of England on the wall with dividing lines to show all of the nine Government Office regions; there is a circular meeting table that we have to squeeze around for the interview and that is it. Although Steve Douglas has had this office since he was made deputy chief executive in 2005, there is nothing to suggest that it is here that he runs the £1.9bn-a-year organisation that is charged with solving the current housing crisis. He may be sitting at his desk hammering out emails when I arrive, but he looks as if he has just dashed in.

The map on the wall is the clue to why: Douglas is never there. During our hour-long conversation he rattles off names of places he has recently visited that demonstrate the corporation’s involvement from Kidbrooke in Greenwich to Pleck in Walsall, from Elephant and Castle in south London to Blackpool. The 42-year-old Londoner, who takes over from outgoing chief executive Jon Rouse on 2 July, has been on the move almost as soon as he left his post as chief executive of London-based ASRA Housing Association to join the corporation as its director of investment and regeneration in the capital in 2001. Since then he has held a number of other posts, all of which have built on his 15 years of experience in working in social housing development for four different housing associations.

As a result, Ian Perry, chief executive of Manchester-based Harvest Housing Group, says Douglas will be a “steady hand” as the corporation moves inexorably towards its merger with government regeneration agency English Partnerships. Perry is not sure though if Douglas would want the top job at new body Communities England. Perhaps unsurprisingly Douglas is keeping tight-lipped on that – perhaps because he is part of the committee deciding its new powers – but as for the rest of his job, he is only too eager to talk.

Q&A

To what extent would it make sense for Communities England to be used where the market is not working? Could it in effect be the government’s housebuilder?

You’ve hit the nail on the head when you said “where the market’s not working”. That is what Communities England is intended to be about. In some instances Communities England might look at the best way to deliver procurement. It might be through housing associations; it might be through developers where they own the land; it might be through URCs where they own the land. Potentially Communities England actually could manage the resources and subcontract the procurement – certainly this will be something that we will be looking at.

How might this work in practice?

We want Communities England to have the ability to hold onto land; to use overage [share in the profit] over the longer term; to invest in infrastructure funding and to take the return later on… In the future, effectively it will be a straight case of whether it’s grant and overage or whether it’s investment and equity return. We’d be able to say much more clearly whether this is potentially an investment in a project and therefore a return will be expected to result.

Housing minister Yvette Cooper has recently talked about her concerns about mergers among housebuilders and the impact it could have on the number of homes that get built – what’s your take on that?

For us the issue has always been about public sector land. The issue in terms of housebuilders is when they get hold of it. If they hold and control it, then they hold and control the market. If you’ve got Communities England actually able to hold and use public sector land and you’ve got local authorities that have got significant land holdings, then your ability to impact on the speed and flow of supply is greatly enhanced. If you are sitting waiting for a housebuilder to say, “I’m going to build out”, then, yes, you are at the behest of that housebuilder. So it is vital you have a relationship that is principally with the landowner. That you are more in control of supply.

Will Communities England build a land bank?

Communities England will be about building on the good things that EP and the Housing Corporation do already… So the answer is yes.

What can the corporation and Communities England do to help first-time buyers?

On the low-cost home ownership side we actually want the market to do more of that. Part of the work we have been doing around the various LCHO products has been about getting equity investors in and new forms of finance in so that we can reduce the amount of public subsidy that needs to go in. We aren’t just looking at housing associations and housebuilders. It is commercial institutions: banks, long-term pension funds. Those that are going to be patient investors and are interested in looking at housing as a potential option.

You’re deputy chair of the Commission on Integration and Social Cohesion; what is the key message from this report for regeneration?

If there is a big message here for them it is “cohesion-proofing”. You need to think about the impact of regeneration on settled communities as well as potential new communities.