The government has extended the Forces Help to Buy scheme until the end of 2022.

The scheme allows military workers to borrow up to half of their annual salary, interest free, to use as a deposit to buy a house, extend their current home or move to another property.

The loan is capped at £25,000 and can be repaid over 10 years.

Since its launch in 2014, the government has lent out more than £280m to more than 18,000 borrowers in the armed forces.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace said: “The extension of this scheme demonstrates the value we put on our Armed Forces and means service personnel can continue to realise the ambition of owning their own home or borrowing to extend.”

The mainstream Help to Buy scheme is scheduled to be overhauled from April 2021 and will run until March 2023, with a tighter version focused on smaller price caps and limited to first-time buyers only.