Following discussions between HBF and Government, Homes England has this afternoon confirmed that it will not enforce the ‘First Longstop’ for the existing Help to Buy scheme, giving builders an extra month to reach build completion on Help to Buy transactions.
In a communication to participating builders, Homes England’s Help to Buy team states ‘we confirm that we will not enforce the First Longstop Date of 28 February 2021’. The Government’s position on the Second Longstop for legal completion by the end of March remains unchanged.
Today’s move means that the legal completion deadline of 31 March is now the key date for builders and buyers to be eligible for Help to Buy 2013-21. Practical completion can be achieved at any point up to and including 31 March 2021. An exception to this continues to be for homes reserved before 30 June 2020 where Homes England has already agreed to allow a further extension to legal completion. This dispensation reflects the impact that the first national lockdown had on construction. For relevant properties the legal completion deadline – and practical completion deadline – is 31 May 2021.
The original date for the ‘First Longstop’ had been 31 December 2020 but following earlier representations from HBF, ministers agreed in July to extend this to the end of February 2021. The trajectory of the pandemic and ongoing issues that HBF members are experiencing with build programmes led to requests for Government to look again at the date by which practical completion is expected.
HBF has welcomed today’s announcement which will be a huge relief to many homebuyers and allow members to get on with building new homes in what continue to be difficult circumstances. We are aware from conversations with several builders that some transactions will still struggle to meet the legal completion cut-off of 31 March. We have begun to discuss these concerns with Government. We will be monitoring the position closely in the coming weeks and would welcome feedback from members.
David O’Leary, Policy Director
