Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Conservative). It was answered on Thursday, 14 May 2009.

Housing: Property Purchase

Question: My Lords, I thank the Minister and I am delighted to hear that further funds have been released. As she probably knows, this is an enormously popular scheme, with 200 applications a week, yet in the whole of the past year only 400 to 800 sales went through. Some people were promised money before the cash ran out and before the immediate release of new money. People who have been promised money have entered into contracts with surveyors and solicitors and have made mortgage arrangements; they are now out of pocket because they were refused money, having been told that they would get it. What will be done to help those people? I understand that they can now proceed with their purchase if the new money is available. However, if their house has already been sold, what will be done to help them?

Answer: My Lords, the noble Baroness is right. This is a popular, generous scheme, for which there is a lot of demand. I have to make it clear that everyone who was interested in the MyChoiceHomeBuy scheme would have been told that they should not spend any money on surveys or solicitors, for example, until the funding was approved. Where the funding has been approved, we have released funding and people will get their equity loans. Now we are considering what we should do in terms of next steps and funding for the affordable housing programme as a whole.

Secondary information