Government misses opportunity to help key workers get on the housing

12.00.00am GMT Wed 26th Mar 2008

The Welsh Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Housing, Peter Black, has accused the Labour-Plaid Welsh Government of missing an opportunity to help poorly paid key workers after they revealed that they will no longer fund the HomeBuy scheme for first time buyers on most properties.

Mr. Black received the news in a letter from Jocelyn Davies AM, Deputy Minister for Housing, in response to his question on the 12th March on the future of the HomeBuy scheme. The letter states that the government have made no Social Housing Grant allocations for HomeBuy for the year 2008/09 and beyond, although homes built to rent by housing associations could be sold to applicants on HomeBuy terms.

HomeBuy was upgraded in 2000 when Mr. Black was Deputy Minister for Housing and was designed to help first time home buyers in rural areas by providing a fifty per cent share in the cost of purchasing a home. The state's share would be protected by a mortgage and re-claimed when the owner sold the property.

"I am disappointed that the government has chosen to block off this avenue to first time buyers." said Mr. Black. "I accept that HomeBuy had weaknesses and needed to be reformed but that was an opportunity to improve it, not abandon it altogether. There was a very real possibility that this scheme could have been transformed into a key workers housing programme for both urban and rural areas, with its own budget and proper accountability and transparency. Public sector workers such as teachers and nurses would then have been able to use it to buy and own their own homes at affordable prices. This decision by the Labour-Plaid government is a missed opportunity."

"I am disturbed that the Government is now limiting HomeBuy to properties which have been built for rent. Even with built-in safeguards giving a housing association first refusal on buying back the property, this will reduce the number of affordable rented homes available for the 80,000 plus households on housing waiting lists in Wales."