10 years on, what did George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme really achieve?

Osborne says the scheme, which closes Friday, helped hundreds of thousands of families', but critics argue it was only a gimmick'

George Osborne's Help to Buy scheme officially shuts this Friday, a little over a decade after the then chancellor launched it with the aim of revitalising what was a sluggish UK property market.

The scheme granted 375,654 interest-free equity loans for the purchase of new-build properties, according to the latest figures which cover until the end of last September, with 84% of applicants first-time buyers. On average they borrowed 63,000, on a typical purchase price of 273,500, with a total value of 23.6bn lent out.