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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the rate of house building in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England.

Estimates of building control reported new build dwellings starts and completions for Coventry, the West Midlands and England in each quarter to December 2020 are shown in Live Tables 253a and 217 at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building.

These cover new build dwellings only and should be regarded as a leading indicator of overall housing supply. An assessment of recent trends is published in the latest release: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-supply-indicators-of-new-supply-england-october-to-december-2020.

The Department also publishes an annual release entitled ‘Housing supply: net additional dwellings, England’, which is the primary and most comprehensive measure of housing supply. This is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/net-supply-of-housing.