Affordable housing: public banks must be forced to help – MP
North Cornwall’s MP, Dan Rogerson, has charged Ministers with ‘walking by on the other side’ as families struggle to find deposits to secure local homes.
The local Liberal Democrat MP is campaigning for banks which have taken money from the public purse to be forced to help people get mortgages on homes in local affordable housing schemes.
Parliamentary Answers to Mr Rogerson establish that the National Housing Federation has concerns about the availability of mortgages and deposit requirements for shared ownership homes, but Minister of State John Healey says the ‘level of deposit required is a commercial decision for lenders’. The Government claims that some lenders do not require any deposit on the value of a share being purchased, but the local MP has dealt with families who cannot get a penny out of the banks without a 30% deposit.
Commenting, Mr Rogerson said:
“Ministers seem to be entirely detached from what is happening on the ground.
“And the Government is suffering a sort of split personality. Whether it’s on fat cats’ salaries and bonuses, or the more stringent criteria banks are now imposing on local families when they need to borrow to take up affordable housing offers, Ministers pass the buck to the banks’ boards. Don’t they realise that the taxpayer has paid billions to bring most of the major banks into public ownership?
“In Parliamentary Questions, I have asked the Government to differentiate between their approach to the banks which are still wholly in the private sector and those which are wholly orpartly owned by the public. Yet Ministers refuse to see the distinction.
“Local families are ready, willing and able to make the commitment to some of the few affordable housing schemes available in Cornwall, yet the banks – banks we have paid to keep going – are standing in their way.”
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