The government had promised to build the affordable homes to help first time buyers get on the property ladder (Picture: Getty Images)

Ministers have failed to deliver any of the promised tens of thousands of new ‘starter homes’, despite setting aside more than £2billion for the project, according to a spending watchdog.

It has led to the government being accused of ‘raising and then dashing people’s expectations’.

The Conservative Party had promised in its 2015 manifesto to build 200,000 affordable new homes in England in a bid to help first-time buyers under the age of 40 to take their first step on the property ladder.

Despite the government setting aside £2.3 billion to support delivery of the project and build the first 60,000 properties under the scheme, the National Audit Office (NAO) said that, to date, no starter homes have actually been built.




Although the government had passed the Housing and Planning Act 2016 in order to create the statutory framework for the project to go ahead, the NAO said the relevant sections of the legislation has yet to come into force.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) now no longer has a budget dedicated to the starter homes project, according to the NAO.

Funding which had been earmarked for the scheme, has instead been spent on acquiring and preparing brownfield sites for housing more generally – some of which was ‘affordable’ housing.

The government had set aside £2.3 billion to support delivery of the project (Picture: Monty Rakusen)

Between 2015-16 and 2017-18, the MHCLG and its agencies spent £174 million preparing land originally intended for starter homes.

The NAO said that, while it was ‘possible’ developers had built and sold some properties which met the starter home criteria, legally they could not be marketed as such until the MHCLG had put place the necessary secondary legislation.

The chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Meg Hillier, said: ‘Despite setting aside over £2 billion to build 60,000 new starter homes, none were built.

‘Since 2010, many housing programmes announced with much fanfare have fallen away, with money then recycled into the next announcement.

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‘The department needs to focus on delivery and not raise, and then dash, people’s expectations.’

Shadow housing secretary John Healey said: ‘The Conservatives’ flagship housing announcement for first-time buyers has been a total failure.

‘It’s clear you can’t trust the Tories to do what they promise.’

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