The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, has outlined the Government's budget commitments, including confirming the details of the Your First Home scheme.
The Home Builders Federation welcomes the announcement of the Your First Home scheme, acknowledging the industry’s calls for targeted demand-side support for home buyers. The Chancellor confirmed £4.7 billion of funding over five years for equity loans to support first-time buyers to purchase qualifying new build homes.
Elsewhere, the Chancellor has announced a range of other housing policy and taxation measures in today’s Budget. These include the Government's response to the consultation on the VAT treatment of land for social housing (‘Golden Brick’), and the introduction of a new First-Time Buyer ISA. The Government also confirmed that brownfield sites up to 1.5 hectares will be exempt from Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements.
In addition, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) confirmed in its economic and fiscal outlook that they expect net additions to the housing stock to fall to around 230,000 in 2025/26 across the UK.
Compared to the March forecast, it expects 190,000 fewer cumulative net additions over the forecast period to 2030/31 and for the ‘Your First Home' equity loan scheme to only have a marginal impact on housing supply given its limited overall size.
The OBR’s outlook also states that the cumulative burden of regulation and policy costs ‘appear to have weighed on house building activity to a greater extent than we had previously assumed’, following HBF’s Viability Crunch report earlier this year.
Neil Jefferson, Chief Executive of the Home Builders Federation (HBF), says: “We welcome the Your First Home scheme to support first-time buyers of new-build homes. A lack of effective demand has been one of the major barriers to increasing housing supply, and addressing it would lead to more much-needed homes, jobs and investment. We await full details on house price caps and the other scheme parameters as we consider the likely impact that the intervention will have on investment in new homes and future housing delivery.”
On the BNG exemption for brownfield, Jefferson added: “We welcome any moves to reduce the considerable regulatory and policy cost burden on house building, albeit this move will have a limited impact and benefit a relatively small number of urban sites.”
Read our full member briefing on the Your First Home scheme.
Read our full member briefing on the wider Autumn Budget 2026 announcements.