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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the total sum spent by his Department on the housing infrastructure fund.

The Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) is a £5.5 billion grant funding programme for infrastructure to unlock up to 650,000 homes. When we launched the fund in July 2017, we received 430 bids, worth almost £14 billion to deliver up to 1.5 million homes.

In February 2018 we announced £866 million to support 133 HIF Marginal Viability Fund (MVF) projects to unlock up to 200,000 homes. In March 2018 we published the 45 areas that we are working with across England to develop Forward Funding (FF) projects with up to £4.6 billion funding available and the potential to unlock up to 450,000 houses. MVF bids are now going through a process of due diligence before funds are released. We expect this due diligence process to be complete by March 2019.

In October 2018 we announced the first successful Forward Funding (FF) bid for £291 million of funding to unlock up to 18,000 homes in East London. There are three bidding windows for FF, the first being in September and December 2018 and the next being in March 2019. We are expecting to make all funding decisions by Summer 2019.