Councils across England will share £8 million as a wave of successful bids paves the way for the first Starter Homes.
The funding will help get shovels in the ground on 27 Starter Home sites across the country.
Today’s funding will support councils in enabling Starter Homes on local brownfield sites that are currently underused or vacant, through measures such as clearance, remediation, demolition and site investigations.
Visiting an L&Q mixed social and private housing site, typical of the kind that will in future include Starter Homes, Communities Secretary Greg Clark said it was a prime example of how the government is helping hard-working people to realise their dream of home ownership.
Communities Secretary Greg Clark said: "Right from day one this government has said we will help people who want to get on in life. Today we are showing how we have kept our word, doing everything to deliver on our promise to help hard working families own their home.
"The funding will help 27 sites across the country prepare for the first Starter Homes to be built as part of the government’s commitment to building 200,000 Starter Homes."
To support the building of more homes for first time buyers the Government also published proposals to broaden the definition of affordable housing to make it easier for housebuilders to provide affordable homes for purchase as well as rent.
Widening the definition enables a fuller range of low cost home ownership options to be built more swiftly and allows councils to take into account a broader range of housing types when considering local need.
As well as helping first time buyers the government is helping housing association tenants to buy their homes. New figures show more than 180 housing association tenants a day are registering their interest in taking up their new Right to Buy.
In an historic agreement between the government and housing associations, the Right to Buy is being extended to 1.3 million housing association tenants – offering a chance many wouldn’t otherwise have had to become a homeowner.
David Orr, Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, said: “We are delighted that the Government is opening up home ownership to even more people. Housing associations are committed to increasing the number of shared ownership homes we offer, on top of the 275,000 we have delivered to date.
We look forward to working in partnership with the Government to build the homes this country needs.”
