BBC NEWS Gordon Brown has been accused by the Tories of raising false hopes over a promised scheme to help people struggling with mortgage payments.
When the PM announced the Home Owner Support Scheme in December he said it would be available from early 2009.
The idea is that lender and homeowner will agree on the proportion of payment to be deferred up to 100% but the government is understood to have clashed with lenders over the extent to which it will underwrite it.
The scheme will now be launched in April due to protracted negotiations with lenders over how it will work.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: "The much-publicised Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme announced last year has not yet helped a single family in trouble.
"The prime minister's wasteful complacency means that millions of extra families could be added to already full social housing lists."
It comes as figures from Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) suggest the number of homes in the UK repossessed by lenders rose last year by 54% to 40,000.
Despite the recession, the CML said this was fewer than it had originally predicted, but it expects repossessions this year will reach about 75,000.
Not much comfort for people facing eviction.
“When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when the man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics” Voltaire
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NHS Behind the headlines
Angus Dei on all and sundry
When the PM announced the Home Owner Support Scheme in December he said it would be available from early 2009.
The idea is that lender and homeowner will agree on the proportion of payment to be deferred up to 100% but the government is understood to have clashed with lenders over the extent to which it will underwrite it.
The scheme will now be launched in April due to protracted negotiations with lenders over how it will work.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: "The much-publicised Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme announced last year has not yet helped a single family in trouble.
"The prime minister's wasteful complacency means that millions of extra families could be added to already full social housing lists."
It comes as figures from Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) suggest the number of homes in the UK repossessed by lenders rose last year by 54% to 40,000.
Despite the recession, the CML said this was fewer than it had originally predicted, but it expects repossessions this year will reach about 75,000.
Not much comfort for people facing eviction.
“When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when the man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics” Voltaire
Angus
NHS Behind the headlines
Angus Dei on all and sundry
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