Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have plans to review legislation in relation to leasehold enfranchisement where the freeholder is a charity and the landlord is a housing association.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The Government’s consultation, 'Tackling unfair practices in the leasehold market', considered a number of issues within the leasehold sector including the sale of new built leasehold houses, and onerous ground rents. The consultation also sought views on what further areas of leasehold reform should be prioritised and why.
The public consultation, which closed on 19 September, received around 6,000 replies. We are carefully analysing the responses, and will issue the Government response shortly.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many new houses they expect to be built as a result of the additional £2 billion for council and housing association homes announced by the Prime Minister on 4 October; and whether the right to buy will apply to those properties.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The additional £2 billion funding for council and housing association homes, including for social rent, will increase the Government’s Affordable Homes Programme 2016-21 to £9 billion.
As set out at Autumn Statement 2016, the Affordable Homes Programme is flexible and sets no ringfences on particular forms of tenure. The amount of funding, the tenure types and the number of homes delivered will be dependent on bids received, reflecting on assessments of local housing needs. Funding for social rent will be focused on areas with acute affordability challenges.
The statutory Right to Buy will apply to tenants of local authority properties who have secure tenancies and meet the qualification criteria.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will allocate the £2 billion for new council and housing association house building announced by the Prime Minister on 4 October; and over what period that funding will be made available.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The funding will be available in England through the Affordable Homes Programme. This is funding with a focus on supporting council housebuilding and housing associations in areas of greatest need; and bids for social rent will need to demonstrate that they provide additionally. We are finalising the delivery procedure and an announcement on when the funding is open for bids will be published shortly.
The funding will be made available for the duration of the Affordable Homes Programme.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the cumulative effects of the one per cent reductions in social housing rents instituted under the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I refer the noble Lord to my previous answers to him on 27 March (PQ HL6120) and 28 March (PQ HL6379).
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the financial impact on local authorities of the imposition of a one per cent pay cap.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
While local government is not covered by public sector pay policy which is set by HM Treasury, it will, of course, have regard for it.
Local government pay matters are devolved and it is for local authorities as independent employers and locally elected bodies to make these decisions within the limits of what is affordable.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the letter from Lord Young of Cookham to Lord Beecham on 5 April regarding the Non-Domestic Rating (Rates Retention) and (Levy and Safety Net) (Amendment) Regulations 2017, a copy of which has been placed in the Library of the House, (1) how many challenges to the 2010 rating lists are outstanding for each year since 2010, (2) how long they estimate it will take to determine those challenges, and (3) what is their estimate of the financial impact of successful challenges on local authorities.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many local authorities they estimate will reduce their Housing Related Support programme budgets in 2017–18 by (1) 30 to 40 per cent, and (2) 50 to 100 per cent.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The Government has not made an estimate but expects local authorities to take on the challenge of making public expenditure savings in order to tackle the deficit while continuing to provide excellent public services to local communities. This includes housing-related support services to the most vulnerable in society. We have already taken several steps during this Parliament to help secure a strong and sustainable adult social care system. The recent Budget contained £2 billion of new funding to support adult social care in the short term. Taken all together, councils have access to £9.25 billion more dedicated funding for adult social care over the next three years, as a result of the measures introduced by the Government since 2015.
Supported housing supports hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people across the country and the Government is committed to protecting this vital provision, and to ensuring it provides value for money as well as individual quality outcomes for residents. As announced by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 15 September 2016 (attached), we will be introducing a new reformed funding model from April 2019 to cover rent and service charges for supported housing, see:
Following recent consultation, we will bring forward more detail in a Green paper to be published later in this year.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the reduction in council housing rents on (1) the maintenance and improvement of the existing council housing stock, and (2) the building of new council houses between now and 2022.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I refer the noble Lord to my previous answer to him on 27 March - PQ HL6120.
As stated in the Housing White Paper, the Government will in due course set out a rent policy for social landlords for the period beyond 2020 to help them to borrow against future income. Our aim is to ensure that they have the confidence they need about their future income in order to plan ahead.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in implementing the recommendations made by the UK Statistics Authority following the 2015 review of the statistics in relation to homelessness and rough sleeping.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
Since the UK Statistics Authority report on homelessness statistics was published DCLG have engaged in detailed discussions with UK Statistics Authority officials. We have met the requirements set out below, and will continue to work with the UK Statistics Authority to make our homelessness statistics as robust and accessible as possible.
We have implemented the key requirement to combine the publication of statistics on statutory homelessness and prevention and relief. We have also enhanced our user engagement structures, and based on user discussions have embarked on a project to redesign the form which collects homelessness data. We have also added harmonised region codes to local authority datasets to allow users to easily re-use the data for regional analysis and have published demographic and time series data on rough sleepers for the first time.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in the light of their intention to devolve discretionary funding on supported housing costs to English local authorities, funding will be provided for such councils under the new burdens doctrine.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I would refer the Noble Lord to the Written Statement by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions made in the other place on 15 September 2016 (attached) about supported accommodation, which made clear we will consider what level of new burdens funding would be appropriate to enable local authorities to fulfil their new role.