Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made on the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on local authority ability to spend right-to-buy replacement funds.
We monitor the effects of the Covid-19 outbreak on the ability of local authorities to spend their receipts arising from Right to Buy sales on replacement social housing. We continue to welcome feedback from authorities on the challenges they are facing. In June this year we extended the period that local authorities had to spend their receipts from 30 June 2020 to 31 December 2020. This has allowed them to retain the receipts locally for a longer period, rather than being required to return them to central government.