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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many (a) affordable homes, (b) social housing units and (c) council housing units have been completed in each of the last five years.

The number of new completions per year and local authority for social rent, affordable rent and London affordable rent homes can be found in live tables 1006C, 1006aC and 1006bC respectively through the following link https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply These figures include acquisitions of existing stock for affordable housing.

In the last five years the number of new affordable homes completed by local authorities, including acquisitions, was as follows:
4,759 in 2015-16;
5,499 in 2016-17;
5,463 in 2017-18;
6,470 in 2018-19 and
6,531 in 2019-20.

Please note that this figure includes all tenures, including those for affordable homes for sale, such as shared ownership. These totals can be derived from the open source data also found in the link above.

It is possible that the 2019-20 figures may have been affected by COVID-19, as the period of national restrictions was introduced just before the cut off period of 31 March 2020. Additionally, some of the data collected directly from local authorities underlying these figures had a lower response rate than in previous years. There will be a scheduled revision for these data in June/July 2021.