George Osborne's flagship Help to Buy scheme 'set to be dumped'
2 min read
George Osborne's flagship Help to Buy scheme could face the chop in a shake-up of housing policy.
Ministers are mulling a “fundamental review” of the ex-chancellor's setpiece housing policy after questions were raised about the scheme’s effectiveness, according to the Telegraph.
Help To Buy allows buyers to purchase homes with minimal cash deposits while also receiving loans from the Government to help with the purchase.
Last year Mrs May pledged an extra £10bn to fund the scheme until 2021, but growing concerns about the policy could reportedly see it replaced with something "more targeted on those it is meant to be helping".
It comes after analysis by Hamptons International found that one in five households involved in the scheme had used it to upgrade their homes, rather than getting on the housing ladder.
Meanwhile, the scheme was used to help more than 10,000 households with incomes of £80,000 or more, while 6,717 households with six-figure incomes benefited from the scheme.
Rumours of the shake-up in housing policy follow concerns from Toby Lloyd, the Prime Minister’s housing advisor, who earlier this year called for the scheme to be dumped, branding it "self-defeating and poorly targeted".
But industry figures have warned that scrapping the scheme could have knock-on effects for the Government’s effort to get a grip on the growing housing crisis.
David O’Leary, policy director for the Home Builders Federation, said that the policy had helped drive “unprecedented growth” in housing supply while helping “hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers onto the housing ladder.”
“Without the scheme in some form, the Government’s ambition to deliver 300,000 new homes per year will be even tougher to achieve," he warned.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing said: “The vast majority of those using our Help to Buy equity loan scheme are first time buyers, as we help a new generation of people own a home of their own.
“More than half of households using the scheme are earning less than £50,000, so we are also helping those on lower and middle incomes get on the property ladder.”
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