The loan fund was put in place at the end of last year to unlock stalled sites with planning permission in the hope of spurring more than 15,000 homes to be built.

Shapps has revealed that more than £100m is still in the loan pot, which could see an extra 2,000 homes built.

The Get Britain Building scheme offers loans available to projects on commercial rates or by taking equity stakes in order to share risk.

In the original bidding round builders could only seek funds for for sites where there were plans to build 25-homes and above. This is now lowered to sites of 15 houses in the hope of attracting more bids.

Shapps said: “By spreading the net wider and boosting the number of eligible sites we can offer more help to builders both large and small.

“We saw huge appetite last time for this funding but some developers later found they could build without the fund.  We need to be sure every single pound of taxpayers’ money works as hard as it can so we can get as many homes as possible out of Get Britain Building. That is why I’m inviting further bids.

“We’ve already started seeing the benefits this is bringing to the industry and the economy as a whole. I now want to see as many firms as possible grabbing this opportunity to get the diggers back on site.”

The deadline for applications is 25 July 2012.