The government has spent £174m acquiring and preparing land for its Starter Homes initiative but failed to deliver a single home, says the National Audit Office.
In April 2015, it committed to deliver 200,000 of these homes sold at 20% discounts to first-time buyers under 40.
The announcement was followed by a £2bn fund to kick-start the delivery of the first 60,000 homes, in the 2015 spending review.
The NAO said the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government has spent millions preparing sites for the homes, but the land has gone to other types of housing delivery.
It said there is no remaining finance and no legislation or planning guidance in support of Starter Homes.
The report says the department spent £151m from the Starter Homes Land Fund. It said the MHCLG has forecasted this will enable 1,268 affordable homes and 3,907 market homes, and the department is forecasting £137.2m for the sale of this land.
A further £97m from the Local Authority Funding programme was used to acquire four sites which the department hopes will deliver 4,500 homes. There is no guidance on how many of these will be affordable.
Further funding from Homes England includes £15.4m spent preparing brownfield land and £6.45m in grants for local authorities.
Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Despite setting aside over £2bn 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. The department needs to focus on delivery and not raise, and then dash, people’s expectations.”
The Housing and Planning Act (2016) sets out the legislative framework for Starter Homes. But without secondary legislation homes cannot be marketed under this scheme.
The MHCLG had expected to introduce this guidance in 2019 but has not yet presented the regulations to parliament.
An MHCLG spokesman said: “We are committed to building more homes and supporting people into home ownership. We have a great track record with house building at its highest level for all but one of the last 30 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.”
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