Andy Burnham will revive the controversial Help to Buy scheme through which hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers got on to the housing ladder under the previous Conservative government, according to people familiar with the situation. The UK prime minister has agreed to launch a new equity loan scheme to help first-time buyers, although it will have a different name to the scheme that ran for 10 years from 2013 to 2023. The people said that Burnham could announce the plan at the Labour Party’s annual conference, which runs from Sunday until Wednesday in Liverpool.

The move comes as ministers agonise over underwhelming housebuilding volumes that jeopardise the Labour government’s target of building 1.5mn net additional dwellings over the five-year parliament. According to government estimates, the number of net additional dwellings in England fell by 4.4 per cent year-on-year in 2025-26 to 199,500. To achieve Labour’s target, an average of 300,000 net additional dwellings must be delivered each year.

The FT reported this month that ministers, including housing minister Matthew Pennycook, have been pushing to revive Help to Buy, albeit on a more limited and targeted scale than the Tories’ version. The housing department released an official review this month suggesting that Help to Buy had been “very high value for money” in what some observers interpreted as an attempt to soften public opinion towards the idea of reviving the scheme. The evaluation concluded that Help to Buy was responsible for one in seven homes built in England over the period it was in place.

It propelled more than 300,000 people to buy their first home, the review found. This year, discussions were held between then-housing secretary Steve Reed, housing officials and housebuilding executives about how a new housing equity scheme could work. Chancellor George Osborne introduced Help to Buy in 2013, offering state-backed equity loans for new-build purchases and a mortgage guarantee scheme for lenders.

The Home Builders Federation, an industry group, has recently put forward its own proposal for a new equity scheme “taking lessons from previous interventions” to help first-time buyers.