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MHCLG handed back £817m to Treasury
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has confirmed it handed back £817m from its budget for this year to the Treasury.
Of this, the department gave back £72m of the 2017/18 budget for affordable housing, £48m from the housing allocation in the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) and £24m from underspend in the Affordable Homes Programme.
In a memo seen by the Huffington Post, the contents of which have been confirmed by the government, housing secretary Sajid Javid wrote that the £817m was “no longer required”.
The largest portion of the funding was £329m out of the Starter Homes budget.
Mr Javid wrote: “Starter Homes budget was surrendered as agreed with [the Treasury] to contribute to the higher affordable housing investment in future years.”
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The memo recorded that the same agreement had been reached for £166m of Accelerated Construction funding, meaning that this money – almost £500m – will likely be put into future affordable housing programmes.
The MHCLG also handed back £65m of London Housing Bank funding, a project set up by Boris Johnson which offered medium-term loans for housing developments.
The money handed back also includes £52m for build-to-rent, £52m for estate regeneration, £6m for the Brent Cross regeneration and £75m that was not required from devolution deals.
Chancellor Philip Hammond announced a suite of housing funding measures in the Autumn Budget last year. These included £400m of loan funding into estate regeneration as well as adding £2.7bn to the Housing Infrastructure Fund to be spent through the NPIF.
A spokesperson for the MHCLG said: “We are delivering the homes our country needs and since 2010 we have built over 357,000 new affordable properties.
“But we are determined to do more and we are investing a further £9bn, including £2bn to help councils and housing associations build social rent homes where they are most needed.”
