Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding has been allocated to the Decent Homes programme in each financial year since 2009-10; and what commitment he has made for future funding of that programme.

The Decent Homes backlog programme provided £1.76 million of funding to local authorities between 2011/16 to tackle their backlog of non-decent homes.

The funding by year as follows:-

2011/12 - £300 million

2012/13 - £394 million

2013/14 - £431 million

2014/15 - £474 million

2015/16 - £160 million

There was no government funding in years 2009/10 or 2010/11. The number of social homes failing to meet the Decent Homes standard is down by 55 per cent since 2007 (between 2007 and 2016), with over 626,000 local authority homes brought up to standard since 2009.

Since the Local Government Self Financing Settlement in 2012 we expect local authorities to use their rental income to maintain the standard.