The Government is being urged to set up a National Housing Fund to provide a guaranteed buyer for developers and stimulate home building.

Think tank ResPublica has put forward the idea after claiming that despite government targets and support for buyers, there just aren’t enough builders of enough capacity who can build fast enough at a great enough scale.

It claims this would help build closer to 200,000 homes a year.

A report by ResPublica, ‘Going to Scale: How a National Housing Fund Can Unlock Britain’s House Building Capacity’, claims developers are reluctant to build on a massive scale, as while there is lots of demand, there is no guarantee of what people can afford.

Instead, the think tank proposes a National Housing Fund backed with £10billion of investment by the Government each year over a decade using Treasury gilts. They would work in partnership with housing associations and smaller developers by acting as a guaranteed buyer for 40,000 to 75,000 homes built a year. This would be on top of the 150,000 homes built on average each year.

There would be an agreement to buy out the government share after a set period and funds would also be freed up for other developments, the report says.

The document says: “Our National Housing Fund offers the British Government a way to finally build the homes it acknowledges it needs. Through the notion of a guaranteed buyer, we reinvent the only formula that has ever enabled the state to build at scale.

“Crucially, we will open up the market for the millions who need it to work for them.”