Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans the Government has to estimate the number of people with mental health problems on social housing waiting lists.

Local authorities are required by law to ensure that ‘reasonable preference’ (ie priority) for social housing is given to those who need to move on medical and welfare grounds, including grounds relating to a disability. Statutory allocations guidance makes clear that this would include a mental illness or disorder.

The annual Local Authority Housing Statistical return collects data on households on the waiting list for each of the reasonable preference criteria: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/local-authority-housing-statistics-data-returns-for-2016-to-2017

In 2016/17, there were 108,858 households that met medical and welfare reasonable preference criteria.