Treasury Covers £140m of Housing Pledge

The Treasury will honour some of the spending commitments made in Labour’s housing pledge, even though the funding was never allocated. Housing minister Grant Shapps said schemes where funding had already been contractually committed would receive their money, even though the new government had found a ‘black hole’ of £780 million of funding that had never been transferred from other departments. The Treasury had already filled £170 million of that deficit from savings made in the first round of cuts at the start of June, but it was also obliged to cover a further £140 million which has already been spent on schemes. An announcement on how much of the remaining pledged funding will be cut is due in the next fortnight. Mr Shapps said: ‘In the next week or two we will have an allocation which has to cover what my predecessor went and spent.” Read the full story on Inside Housing.