War on the Quangocrats? Let’s start with Homes England

Kudos to the Taxpayers Alliance for producing the Quango Rich List 2025. The massive increase in the remit of the state is partly due to Quangos receiving far less scrutiny than they merit. Perversely, the gargantuan scale of their power and spending has left journalists and politicians so befuddled that the task has not been attempted. The sums involved so defy belief that sometimes spending of millions is reported by mistake when billions is the accurate tally. Then we have the difficulty of defining a Quango. Such attempts soon induce a headache. The Government lists 304 “Arm’s Length Bodies of the UK Government” for the financial year 2022/23, the most recent for which figures are available. It adds that in that year, they cost the taxpayer £353.3 billion. (That’s BILLION.) Total public spending that year was £1,151 billion. So it is hardly a trivial matter. Those who breezily dismiss any scope for reduced public spending (all too often including Conservatives) perhaps have not investigated this area with sufficient rigour.

The Cabinet Office offers a breakdown into three categories of these public bodies or Quangos:

“Executive Agency – a public body that acts as an arm of its home department.

“Non-Departmental Public Body – a public body that operates separately from its sponsoring department.

“Non Ministerial Department – a public body that shares many characteristics with a full department, but without a minister and acts separately from any sponsoring department.”

It should not be assumed that all the £353.3 billion is wasted. Some of the money manages to dribble through the leaky bureaucratic hose to be spent on public services. For instance, the Government is abolishing NHS England. That has a budget of £183 billion. However, spending on the NHS will, of course, continue. Bringing it within the Department for Health and Social Care might save a billion or two on duplication and waste. But the change is more about accountability. No longer should we hear the response to some scandal: “Don’t blame me. I’m only the Health Secretary. I’m not responsible for the NHS. It is run at arm’s length.” Local democracy might be a better model. Still, being able to blame Wes Streeting is better than nothing. It is “very courageous” that he is seeking a proper role for himself rather than merely the ceremonial function of rolling up his sleeves for photo opportunities in hospitals with a caring expression.

Anyway, the Taxpayers Alliance research “examines the number of staff at quangos who received over £100,000 in total remuneration in 2023-24.” It finds that:

“At least 1,472 quango staff received over £100,000 in total remuneration (comprising salary, expenses, benefits, bonuses, compensation for loss of office and pension benefits or contributions) in 2023-24.

“In 2023-24, at least 343 quango staff received more than £200,000 in total remuneration. There were 315 quango staff in 2023-24 who received a higher salary, as opposed to total remuneration, than the £172,153 salary entitlement of the prime minister.

“A total of 94 quangos did not provide accounts for 2023-24.”

Who was the “winner”?

“In 2023-24, the quango with the most staff receiving at least £100,000 in total remuneration was Homes England, which had 111.”

Does it provide value for money? Last year an investigation by The i found the following:

“Homes England, the quango supposed to be tackling the housing crisis for Michael Gove the Housing Secretary, has become a consultants’ “gravy train”, dogged by secrecy and a “horrifying lack of focus” verging on the “immoral”, former senior insiders have told i.

“A lavish staff conference held by the agency resembled a “rock concert”, i has been told, with hundreds of people put in hotels for the event including many in four star accommodation.

“The agency, an arm of Mr Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC), has also been making increasing use of costly temporary staffing arrangements….

“A former Homes England senior manager who had previously worked for private housebuilding firms told i that they had left demoralised after three years in their role….

“They said that Homes England had been “rinsed” by consultants – architects, engineers, and designers – who were on £800 to £1,000 a day, which was up to 50 per cent more than the private sector builders would pay.

“It felt like a bit of a gravy train,” the ex manager said. “I could have got for an architect for far cheaper but I was told it couldn’t [happen] because they weren’t on the framework. It was very frustrating.”…

“Freedom of Information responses seen by i have revealed another £16m spent on services from the Boston Consulting Group between 2019 and 2023. Tens of millions more have gone on Evolve – an opaque internal “transformation” project.”

Welcome to Quangoland. The upshot, according to its annual report, is that Homes England “enabled the completion of more than 32,300 homes.” Just for the sake of the argument, let us suppose that none of those homes would have been built without its benevolent intervention. The Quango’s total budget, courtesy of the taxpayer was £3.45 billion for that year. So a subsidy of £107,000 for each property built. Even if you are a socialist and believe in state intervention in the building industry that is astonishingly poor value. But if you read on the report adds that only “24,282 completions” were designated as “affordable” housing. So then the subsidy for each property goes up to £142,000.

They might respond that this is a crude measure of performance. That it is all rather more complicated with their array of schemes. For instance, we have the:

“Private Rented Sector Guarantee Scheme – a £3.5bn programme to support the building of new homes for the private rented sector by enabling developers or investors to raise low cost debt to refinance development funding on a long-term basis.”

Indeed. But what is the logic of the Government piling on taxes and regulation to punish the private rented sector and then spraying out subsidies to make up for it? It’s like the Three Stooges film about plumbing. One layer of intervention to compensate for another, with ever increasing chaos.

A far better way to increase the housing supply would be the sale of surplus public sector land for property development – without Homes England getting in the way “facilitiating” the process. Of course, radically liberalising the planning system is an imperative. Stamp Duty also gums up the works. The abolition of Homes England, with a saving of £3.5 billion, could help to reduce it.

For the Conservatives to restore our credibility as a force for freedom and limited Government we should press the Government to dismantle the Quango state. Homes England would be a good place to start.