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This policy explains how accessible the documents National Housing Bank publishes on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï are. It covers:

• PDFs
• spreadsheets
• presentations
• other types of document

It does not cover content published on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï in HTML format – this is covered in °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï’s accessibility statement.

Using our documents

National Housing Bank publishes documents in a range of formats, including PDFs, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use those documents. For example, when we produce a document we make sure to:

• provide an HTML option where possible
• tag headings and other parts of the document properly, so screen readers can understand the page structure
• make sure we include caption text alongside non-decorative images, so people who cannot see them understand what they’re there for
• avoid using tables, except when we’re presenting data
• write in plain English

How accessible our documents are

New documents we publish and documents you need to download or fill in to access one of the services we provide should be fully accessible.

Our presence on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï launched in March 2026 but we may have tagged older content as now being related to National Housing Bank as well as, or instead of, Homes England.

We know that most of our older documents (published before 23 September 2018) are not accessible. For example, some of them:

• are not marked up properly – for example, they do not contain proper headings
• have colour contrast issues that may make text hard to read for some users
• are not written in plain English
• contain images that are not accompanied by a text alternative

This mostly applies to documents we keep on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï for transparency reasons – documents that are not necessary for our users to complete a task. These older documents are exempt from the regulations, so we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.

But if you need to access information in one of these document types, you can contact us and ask for an alternative format.

Reporting accessibility problems

·¡³¾²¹¾±±ôÌýenquiries@homesengland.gov.uk if you:

• need information on this website in a different format
• find any problems not listed on this page
• think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 3 working days.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’).

If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, .

Technical information about the accessibility of our documents

National Housing Bank is committed to making our documents accessible, in accordance with the .

The documents National Housing Bank publishes are partially compliant with the , due to the non-compliances listed .

Non-accessible content

We provide details of non-accessible content here and the reasons for this.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

All National Housing Bank or Homes England documents not listed under ‘disproportionate burden’ are either fully accessible, or have been published with an accompanying alternative version (typically in an HTML format).

Disproportionate burden

We will publish Request for Information (RFI) requests for National Housing Bank as PDF files, as we do for Homes England. We have assessed the effort required to make this content accessible and, when considered against the very limited audience for such files, deem it a disproportionate burden to fix them.

Homes England has published forms to °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï in both PDF and Word document format. Currently, the only way to capture user information in a fully accessible way on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï is to create a ‘service’. We deem it a disproportionate burden to create services for each of the Homes England forms currently on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï.

As part of our disproportionate burden assessment, we have also conducted an Equality Impact Assessment to ensure no group with protected characteristics is adversely affected by our document remediation plans.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix these Home Building Fund developer case studies.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

How we tested our documents

As a new organisation we will look to test our published documents on a regular basis.

We will test:

• PDFs
• Word documents
• Excel spreadsheets

We look to either withdraw material from °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï, convert material to HTML or list material as being a disproportionate burden to change.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

National Housing Bank is adopting an HTML-first publishing approach, with the exception of particularly long or complex documents, for which we will aim to provide an HTML alternative either upon or shortly after publication.

We are also reviewing the accessibility of documents that are exempt from the regulations, such as those published before September 2018, to ensure our °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï content is as accessible as possible.

We will consider individual requests for reasonable adjustments under Equalities legislation in relation to any of our documents on °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï.

Review dates for this page

We will review this statement regularly as National Housing Bank content is added to °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï.

This page was prepared on 24 March 2026. It was last updated on 24 March 2026.

Review is proposed in March 2027.

Read the Homes England accessible documents policy.