Angela Rayner’s ministry has had to step in over “wasteful spending” at Homes England after the government housing agency burned through more than £117m on a failed IT project, The i Paper can reveal.

Labour is relying on the organisation to deliver large parts of its ambitious plan to build 1.5m new homes by 2029 , but developers are concerned about the way it has performed.

The taxpayer money Homes England spent on Evolve – an aborted scheme to modernise its error-prone computer systems – could have been enough to pay for as many as 3,360 brand new affordable homes.

It began in 2019, when Conservatives were in power, and was supposed to continue for a decade. But it was brought to halt in May, it has now emerged, after years of warnings about its shortcomings.

‘Troubling’ fin

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