A committee of MPs has warned the government’s £21bn National Housing Delivery Fund risks an unbalanced impact across the country.
In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said it was not convinced the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and Homes England have a sufficiently strategic approach to ensuring a balanced portfolio of housing projects across a range of locations.
The government is aiming to deliver 1.5m new homes by July 2029, requiring more than 300,000 homes a year – levels last achieved in the 1960s. As part of efforts to tackle a shortage of land for housing, the government launched the National Housing Delivery Fund (NHDF) in March, but did so without a pipeline of projects.
The PAC said this suggested the approach was “reactive and demand-led” rather than strategically planned, leaving a risk that the eventual portfolio would not be balanced across different areas.
MHCLG has reported that 57,671 homes had been delivered by legacy programmes as at the end of December 2025, with 24,400 of those identified through retrospective analysis.
The report also raised concerns that neither MHCLG nor Homes England had set out how they would judge whether the NHDF has been successful, nor how many homes they expect to be built on land it unlocks, or by when.
The PAC said that without clear and measurable success criteria, MHCLG cannot robustly assess the fund’s performance, “weakening its accountability to Parliament”.
Clive Betts MP, deputy chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Our nation’s housing crisis has a number of complex drivers, including the loss of social housing and a failure of supply keeping pace with demand. One of the more important pieces of the puzzle for the government to solve will be opening up the supply of land which developers view currently as not attractive or profitable enough to build upon.”
The report further examined the impact of local government reorganisation, under which two-tier councils are being replaced by unitary authorities. Homes England told the committee’s inquiry that this process was “absorbing a large amount of energy and attention”.
For the NHDF, the department has devolved £1.3bn of grant funding to Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities through integrated settlements to support land unlocking projects. The PAC stressed the importance of ensuring funding is not disrupted and that accountability remains clear as local government structures continue to change.
The PAC has made five recommendations, including that the department set out success criteria for the NHDF’s broad aims, report annually on homes completed and expected on unlocked land, confirm its methodology for tracking homes built under legacy programmes, and clearly explain how the fund will select and balance projects across locations. It has also urged the department to progress external evaluation of the NHDF without delay.
Betts added: “We have all long been in desperate need of homes, and land on which to build them, so the many billions of pounds that government has put behind this effort are to be welcomed.
“However, our committee is focused on delivery, rather than the choice to allocate funds, which in this instance have been set aside without a considered pipeline of projects ready to go. Indeed, £21bn has been marked for housing delivery without any criteria to judge whether it has been successfully spent.
“We fear that at present, housing projects which advocate for themselves will benefit, while other areas in similar or even perhaps greater need may miss out, which could produce unequal outcomes in different areas of England. Such an important policy will require a strategic focus if it is to have any hope of success, and we hope the recommendations in our report help government develop one.”
Image credit: Wayne Harrison/Pixabay
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