Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department has taken to manage the transfer of the service provision for the Help to Buy: Equity Loan Scheme from Target to Lenvi.

The contract with Lenvi was awarded following a rigorous procurement process. It is a concession contract, so the equity loan administrator's costs are met through fees charged to customers with an equity loan.

Homes England established a project team to manage the process, with a programme of testing before migration of customer data and the service launching on 19 June. Following the migration and launch, the service has been subject to high volumes of customer calls and emails, and this has led to delays for some customers. We are working to address this.

Several steps have been taken in response. This includes increasing staff working hours, ensuring urgent cases are prioritised and escalated, encouraging customers to use email instead of phoning wherever possible and targeted communications channels to keep customers informed.

The department receives daily updates and regularly monitors the service recovery plan and a number of actions have been taken to improve the service.