Booming housebuilders should be last in the queue for Treasury handouts | Nils Pratley

Vistry Group's healthy results suggest a sector that's doing very well despite the pandemic

Big housebuilders were mostly agreed last autumn: their sector had rebounded from the first national lockdown but more subsidies were needed to avoid a crunching slowdown this spring.

Would the chancellor like to extend his one-year stamp duty holiday on house purchases worth less than 500,000 in England and Northern Ireland? Or delay the post-March slimming of the help-to-buy scheme? If not, it was suggested, a cliff edge awaited.