The bosses of ten of the country’s biggest house builders have seen their pay soar by nearly £170million since the launch of the taxpayer-backed Help to Buy scheme four years ago, says the Daily Mail.
Almost a third of the 405,000 homes built since 2013 – 112,000 – have been bought by families using the “controversial scheme, making it highly lucrative for fat cat developers”.
Ten top firms, including Barratt, Redrow and Taylor Wimpey, made profits of £4billion last year, while their bosses earned £42.6million. That took their total pay since 2013 to £168million.
A government survey last year found that 57 per cent of those using the Help To Buy scheme could have afforded to buy without it.
The Mail references the £115 million shares bonus to Jeffrey Fairburn of Persimmon; Taylor Wimpey’s £130 million leasehold ground rent scandal; and Bovis building shoddy homes.
Duncan Scott, of the campaign group Priced Out, was quoted saying: ‘Th Help To Buy scheme … [makes] it even more difficult for first-time buyers to get on the housing ladder.
“Developers have been making huge profits in the last four years, building houses they would have built regardless. The Government should be helping builders build more homes, not sell the homes they are building anyway.”
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As I, and others, have said before, this “Help To Buy Scheme” is more than half the trouble. It can only be used on new build and the builders put their houses to leasehold sales to make even more money, very clever.
It should be called “The Help To Sell Scheme For Builders”.
The “Help To Buy Scheme” (Taxpayers Money) should never have been allowed to be used to purchase leasehold houses in the first place.
These government muppets who thought up and introduced the scheme should be named and shamed, they are unfit for purpose.
I would not be surprised if government were not “in with the builders” when they introd the scheme, In the main, all it has done is helped builders to sell leasehold houses.
When are the government going to step in and do something that is actually meaningful about how the help To Buy Scheme is being wrongfully used and stop the unnecessary sale (except in extenuating circumstances) of leasehold houses.
The help To Buy Scheme should be used to buy a property NOT a Lease (glorified rent book).
The only people who have done something meaningful so far are the Nationwide Building Society