The Help to Buy scheme was set up in 2013 by then chancellor George Osborne in the midst of austerity and was aimed at helping first time buyers get on the property ladder.

 But there were always questions about whom exactly it was helping, with the cap on property values as high as £600,000 in the southeast, to as low as £186,000 in the northeast.

An investigation by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) into who actually benefited from Help to Buy found the schemes ‘had the largest impact – in terms of making homes affordable – on higher income households’.

The IFS said: ‘Since these individuals would normally be expected to be able to save for a minimum deposit quite quickly even without Help to Buy, it is likely that these schemes accelerated their first home purchase by a few years rather than making the difference between becoming a homeowner or not in the longer term.’

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