The levelling up department is handing back £1.9bn to the Treasury after failing to find projects to spend the money on.
Michael Gove’s department has surrendered hundreds of millions of pounds budgeted for 2022/23, including £1.2bn allocated for Help to Buy, £255m to fund new affordable housing and £245m allocated to improve building safety.
Figures released by the department show it is not spending its full allocation. In 2022/23, the department underspent on the affordable housing programme by £700m.
It has retained £363m of that in the hope it will be able to spend it in this financial year, but a further £355m has been handed back to the Treasury.
Shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy said: “This absolutely beggars belief. We are in the middle of an acute housing crisis, even the housing secretary says the system is broken, and yet the government was unable to spend a third of its housing budget. The Tories have simply given up.”
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