The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) welcomed the announcement in the Government’s draft legislative agenda of plans to provide more help for first-time buyers, in particular the widening of access to shared equity schemes. In future, all first-time buyers with an income of less than £60,000 will have the opportunity to apply to buy a share of their home.

Other measures announced in the legislative programme include: an initiative to enable the Housing Corporation to allocate up to £200m to buy new properties on the open market, to be made available either for first-time buyers to purchase through the Homebuy scheme or for social renting. Although this will have only a relatively modest impact on the housing market, it has the potential to widen the first-time buyer shared equity scheme. In addition, proposals to give the Bank of England greater flexibility to respond to credit market conditions by allowing short-term non-disclosure of liquidity assistance is another measure. Lenders believe the bank should be able to respond flexibly to changing conditions in credit markets.

Michael Coogan, CML’s director general, said: “The Government’s announcement on shared equity means that its approach is now more logical, providing help based on the income rather than the occupation of buyers. It will remove an anomaly by which providing help for one group of less well-paid workers makes access to home-ownership more difficult for others earning similar salaries but working in different jobs.

“The Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT) market study in sale-and-leaseback is also welcome, and we hope it will be completed by September, as promised, and acted upon quickly. The reality is that sale-and-leaseback companies are already targeting home-owners in difficulty. The quicker we have effective regulation of the sector to provide protection for consumers, the better the safety net for borrowers in financial difficulty will be.”