Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the criteria used to designate housing as affordable for identifying real affordability; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
On 5 March we published a draft revised National Planning Policy Framework which included a revised definition of affordable housing. This built on the consultation undertaken as part of the Housing White Paper last year. The consultation is open until 10 May.
Since 2010, we have delivered over 357,000 new affordable homes, including over 257,000 affordable homes for rent.
Affordable housing remains the Government’s priority. That’s why the Prime Minister recently announced an additional £2 billion funding for affordable housing, increasing the Affordable Homes Programme 2016-21 budget to over £9 billion to deliver a wide range of affordable housing, including social rent homes, by March 2021.
Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he has taken to ensure that leaseholders are not charged exorbitant rates.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The Government is committed to tackling unfairness and increasing transparency in the leasehold sector.
The 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 very shortly.
The Government is also seeking views on the regulation of letting and managing agents and the approaches government could take to implement any such regulation. The Call for Evidence: Protecting consumers in the letting and managing agent market is available at:https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/protecting-consumers-in-the-letting-and-managing-agent-market-call-for-evidence and closes on 29 November 2017.