Chancellor George Osborne has today outlined plans for the Bank of England to conduct a yearly review of the scheme, with the first taking place next September.
However Balls, who criticised the Help to Buy plans in a conference speech last week, has called on the government to allow the Bank of England to appraise the scheme before its launch.
“Instead of waiting a year, the Bank of England should review the details of the second phase of Help to Buy now before it goes ahead,” Balls said.
“For instance, it’s totally ill-thought through for George Osborne to decide that a scheme which should be about helping first time buyers will allow taxpayer backed mortgages for homes worth up to £600,000.
Repeating criticisms made at the Labour party conference in Brighton, he said that Osborne needed to dramatically increase house building to address supply issues.
“George Osborne is still failing to address the fundamental problem of the lowest level of house building since the 1920s. You can’t deal with the cost of living crisis without building more homes.
“Rising demand for housing must be matched with rising supply. Unless George Osborne acts now to build more affordable homes, as Labour has urged, then he risks making it even harder for first time buyers to get on the housing ladder. It’s no wonder that for millions of families this is no recovery at all.”
