Only one family has benefited from Labour's mortgage rescue scheme

Good news from King's Lynn. Emma Whitford has used the government's mortgage rescue scheme to change to a shared-equity arrangement after she lost her job and started struggling to meet mortgage repayments.

The bad news is that research by Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat shadow housing minister, suggests that Emma's is the only household to have benefited under the scheme so far. It was announced back in September of last year and given huge publicity when it was launched in January.

As Sarah says:

“Tens of thousands of families will face the misery of repossession and homelessness this year but the Government’s scheme has helped just one household.

“This is an appalling failure by a Government that is more interested in headline-grabbing than in helping families through the economic crisis.”

You can find the the official figures in a document on a Department for Communities and Local Government website.

It is hard becoming increasingly hard not to see Gordon Brown as a deluded figure. His numerous announcements bear less and less resemblance to the life the rest of us live outside his bunker.