Starter homes scheme: The Government has built zero of the 200,000 affordable homes promised in 2014 Millions of the fund has been spent, however, said the National Audit Office

The government has not built a single starter home out of the 200,000 it promised, the National Audit Office has found.

Hundreds of thousands of new starter homes were promised by the government in 2014, with a £2.3bn budget earmarked for the discounted homes.

But the promise pledged in the Conservative government’s manifesto never got off the ground as the supporting legislation was never passed in parliament, the audit revealed on Tuesday.

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The hundreds of thousands of homes intended to get struggling first time buyers on the property ladder, offering buyers under the age of 40 a 20 per cent discount.

Millions spent on buying sites

Millions of pounds from the fund has been spent, however, said the watchdog. By 2018, £174m was spent by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the project to acquire and prepare sites intended for the programme, with the intention of having the homes built by 2020, the NAO report said.

But the homes, scheduled to be built in Plymouth, Bury, Basildon, Stockport, Bridgwater, Cinderford and Bristol, now feature standard homes, with only a portion of them deemed affordable housing.

“The funding originally intended for starter homes has instead been spent on acquiring and preparing brownfield sites for housing more generally, some of which is affordable housing,” the report said.

“It is possible that developers have built and sold homes that conform to the intended starter home specifications. However, legally these cannot be marketed as starter homes until the necessary secondary legislation is enacted.”

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

The revelation is poor timing for the government. If it wanted to take swift action on the pledge, it won’t be able to do so before the general election, as parliament enters recess on Wednesday. Meanwhile, leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn has pledged 240,000 new homes per year, with 60,000 of those built in London, with 50 per cent of them council homes.

Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the public accounts committee, told the Financial Times: “Since 2010, many housing programmes announced with much fanfare have fallen away with money then recycled into the next announcement. The department needs to focus on delivery and not raise, and then dash, people’s expectations.”

Using sites for development

The department said the £250m starter home fund was spent purchasing and remediating (restoring by reversing or stopping environmental damage) sites for development.

It added Homes England, the non-departmental public body that funds new affordable housing in England, has used the sites to support the delivery of more homes including affordable housing.

An MHCLG Spokesperson said: “We are committed to building more homes and supporting people into home ownership. We have a great track record and house building is at its highest level for all but one of the last thirty years – with 222,000 homes delivered last year, and 1.3 million in total since 2010, including over 430,000 affordable homes.”

“The number of first time buyers is currently at an 11-year annual high, and over 560,000 households have been helped into home ownership through government schemes like Help to Buy and Right to Buy.”