Tory housing shambles: Over budget and behind schedule

It’s no secret that Britain faces a housing crisis – and new figures show David Cameron’s big plan to “Get Britain Building” is turning out to be an abject failure.

The Get Britain Building fund was launched in November 2011 by then-Housing Minister Grant Shapps, who announced £400 million to build 16,000 homes over the next three years. Cameron then relaunched the project in March 2012, with the cost soaring to £570 million and the deadline extended to March 2015.

It turns out that so far, of the 16,000 planned, only 715 houses have been built, with a mere 47 of those being affordable homes. We’ve popped that into a handy graph:

Labour’s Shadow Housing Minister Emma Reynolds was damning, saying:

“It is astonishing that after announcing £400m to deliver 16,000 homes and then re-announcing the same scheme six months later with more money, no additional homes will be built as a result and only 7% will be affordable. Labour is clear that you can’t deal with the cost-of-living crisis without building more homes. That’s why Labour has committed to getting 200,000 homes a year built by 2020.”

A spiralling budget, a pushed back deadline, and only a handful of affordable homes. Just how is this supposed to be helping?