By Maria Connolly

The government re-iterated its commitment to fix what it calls the “broken housing market” and to raise the supply of new homes to 300,000 per year. As a result, several housing-relating measures were announced:

  • The Housing Revenue Account cap, which controlled the level of local authority borrowing for house building, has been abolished. The government claims this will allow councils to increase house building to around 10,000 homes per year.
  • The Housing Infrastructure Fund will be increased by £500 million to a total £5.5 billion. This is designed to enable up to 650,000 new homes to be built, according to government estimates.
  • The Help to Buy Equity Loan Scheme as we currently know it will be closed in March 2021. A new scheme, only available to first time buyers, will run from April 2021 until March 2023 after which there is no intention to introduce a further scheme.