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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many new starter homes have been built in (a) Wallasey and (b) Merseyside in each of the last two years.

No starter homes have yet been built as the regulations required to define them are not yet in place. The new National Planning Policy Framework, published in July this year, brought starter homes within the definition of affordable housing, as per our Housing White Paper commitment. We expect to make an announcement on the next steps for starter homes in the near future.

In the meantime we are supporting people's aspirations to buy through a range of initiatives including Help to Buy, Right to Buy, greater funding for Shared Ownership and Rent to Buy. Since Spring 2010 Government-backed schemes have helped over 481,000 households to buy a home and the number of first-time buyers is at a nine-year annual high. The Stamp Duty exemption for first time buyers announced last autumn helped 121,500 people by June 2018.