Asked by: Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many families have been registered as homeless in the United Kingdom since 2010.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The information requested is enclosed in the attached table, which includes data going back to 1998-99, which illustrates how the level of homelessness in England is far lower than the average under the last Administration.
This Government have invested over £500 million to prevent and tackle all forms of homelessness and rough sleeping since 2010. The homelessness legislation in England provides one of the strongest safety nets in the world for families with children and vulnerable people who become homeless through no fault of their own.
Homelessness acceptances remain lower than in 27 of the last 30 years, and homelessness is around half the average level it was under the previous Administration. Households now spend on average seven months less in temporary accommodation than at the start of 2010.
Figures for other parts of the United Kingdom are the responsibility of the devolved Administrations.
Asked by: Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many families have been in temporary accommodation in the United Kingdom in each year since 2010.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The information requested is enclosed in the attached table, which includes data going back to 1998-99, which illustrates how the level of homelessness in England is far lower than the average under the last Administration.
This Government have invested over £500 million to prevent and tackle all forms of homelessness and rough sleeping since 2010. The homelessness legislation in England provides one of the strongest safety nets in the world for families with children and vulnerable people who become homeless through no fault of their own.
Homelessness acceptances remain lower than in 27 of the last 30 years, and homelessness is around half the average level it was under the previous Administration. Households now spend on average seven months less in temporary accommodation than at the start of 2010.
Figures for other parts of the United Kingdom are the responsibility of the devolved Administrations.
Asked by: Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what changes to housing policy they have introduced since 2010; and how any such changes have been evaluated.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Since publishing “Laying the Foundations: A Housing Strategy for England”, the Government has implemented a range of policies to get Britain building again, to fix the broken housing market and to help hard-working people get the home they want.
In particular, we have created a streamlined and locally-led planning system and removed unnecessary burdens that were restricting the supply of housing; and built more affordable housing and a new generation of council housing.
We have supported home ownership, restoring confidence in the housebuilding sector and helping more first time buyers to enter the housing market, and created a bigger and better private rented sector, including building more homes to rent. We have also provided infrastructure and development finance; promoted self-build and custom-build; made better use of surplus public sector land; and helped bring empty and redundant land and property back into use.
During this Parliament, a significant number of our housing policies and programmes have been evaluated by the Select Committee, by external bodies and by the DCLG itself.
For instance, in February 2014, DCLG published an evaluation study by Sheffield Hallam University on “Promoting mobility through mutual exchange: Learning lessons from the housing mobility demonstration projects”. This report distilled the key lessons to be learnt from 12 authorities or partnerships of authorities which participated in a mobility demonstration project, allowing social tenants to swap homes. The report was published on the Gov.uk website and a copy was placed in the Library of the House.
As a further example, in December 2014 DCLG published its “Evaluation of the New Homes Bonus” in the first four years of its implementation. This reflected externally-commissioned research by the University of Sheffield and others, plus internal DCLG research (including use of data from the 2013 British Social Attitudes survey). This was announced via a Written Ministerial Statement on 16 December 2014, Official Report, column WS20, and a copy was placed in the Library of the House.
Asked by: Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the demand for housing in the United Kingdom over the next 10 years compared to expected levels of supply.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The Government does not produce estimates of the demand for housing in the United Kingdom or forecasts or targets for overall house building.
Housing is a devolved matter in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each publishes projections of household growth which are published as follows:
England: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/household-projections
Scotland: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/households/projections/
Wales: http://wales.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/household-projections/?lang=en
Northern Ireland: http://www.nisra.gov.uk/demography/default.asp21.htm
Household projections provide a starting point for understanding future levels of housing demand and local authorities must take the projections into account when they plan locally.
Asked by: Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many new homes in the owner-occupied, private rented and social rented sector have been constructed in each of the last 20 years.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Annual statistics on house building completions by tenure in England are published in the Department's live table 244 which is available at the following link:
http://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building
The ‘private rented’ and 'owner-occupied’ sectors will be included in the private enterprise tenure. Taken together, house building statistics by housing association and local authority tenures provide estimates of total social housing completions, but these figures understate total affordable supply. This is because the house building figures are categorised by the type of developer rather than the intended final tenure, leading to under recording of affordable housing, and a corresponding over recording of private enterprise figures.
Over 506,000 new homes have been delivered since April 2010. Starts on new homes in the past year totalled 139,500 – up by 17 per cent on the previous year, and the highest annual total since 2007.
More comprehensive statistics on affordable housing completions funded by the Homes and Communities Agency and the Greater London Authority since 2009-10 by local authority district are available at the following links:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/housing-statistics
These statistics include both newly built housing and acquisitions but exclude delivery of affordable housing not funded by Homes and Communities Agency or Greater London Authority programmes that are reported in local authority returns to the Department. A fuller picture of all affordable housing completions is published in the Department’s live tables 1006, 1006a, 1007 and 1008, which are available at the following link:
http://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply
Asked by: Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the trend rate of real house price growth over the past 20 years.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The Department has not analysed trends in real house prices over the time period asked for. Different methods can be used to produce different estimates.
The latest Office of National Statistics figures on house prices can be found at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/hpi/house-price-index/november-2014/index.html
The latest Office of National Statistics figures on inflation measures can be found at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/consumer-price-indices/december-2014/stb---consumer-price-indices---november-2014.html