Designed to help aspiring buyers by giving them the opportunity to buy a share of their property, government figures revealed that since the pilot launch began in April 2006, only 88 people had benefited from Social HomeBuy.
Grant Shapps, Shadow Housing Minister, said the take-up of the scheme was ‘laughable’. “Something isn’t working here. Even if this is supposed to be a pilot or a trial, you would expect to see better results than 88 homes in a year and a half,” he said.
However, Yvette Cooper, Housing Minister, defended the HomeBuy system. She said: “The majority of the 88 Social HomeBuy sales to date have come from completions with the first phase of participating landlords, most of whom joined in late 2006. 85 were from housing associations and three were from local authorities.
“Since April this year a second phase of landlords have joined the pilot scheme and are now offering Social HomeBuy to their tenants. As with normal home purchases it can take several months to reach completion,” Cooper added.
The Housing Minister confirmed that the government was being advised on how to further develop the various HomeBuy initiatives in the coming months, but she admitted that only 77 housing associations and nine local authorities offered the scheme.
get the daily news delivered to your inbox
download our news ticker
find the latest industry jobs
