No starter homes have been built in the past three years and the Government will fail to reach its target of 200,000 by 2020 despite allocating £1.2 billion to the programme.
Housing Minister Kit Malthouse has admitted that the election pledge made in 2015 to build starter home exclusively for first time buyers at a 20% discount on their market value will not be met.
House builders have hit out at the admission, although the National Federation of Builders (NFB) said that it is not entirely surprised at the failure of the starter homes programme and revealed that since 2015 it has asked Ministers and civil servants how the industry can deliver homes under this scheme, but we never received any response or support.
Richard Beresford, chief executive of the NFB, said that the lack of transparency remains worrying and feeds into wider concerns that developers have with the Government and local authorities, who do not appreciate how damaging a lack of certainty is to SME house builders.
He pointed out that the starter homes programme could have delivered some planning certainty, as it would have added work to local pipelines. But Malthouse’s admission explains why developers were not sure how they could get involved with starter homes.
‘This is bad news for the UK’s housing market and exposes the poor level of trust in relations between the Government and SME house builders. The Government must rethink how it should work with the wider industry, and not just a few volume house builders. It must figure out whether it really wants to build affordable homes or just win plaudits for acknowledging the problem and appearing to try,’ Beresford added.
According to Rico Wojtulewicz, head of housing and planning policy for the House Builders Association (HBA), said that the Government has let SMEs down by promising a scheme that they were best suited to deliver but never engaging with them to deliver it.
‘As refreshing as Malthouse’s honesty is, it comes too late particularly as starter homes were included in the most recent revision to planning policy. House builders are doing everything in their power to fix the housing crisis. It would be great if the Government shared our commitment,’ he added.
