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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effect of the spare room subsidy on trends in the level of empty properties.

Statistics on vacant dwellings in England and in each local authority district are published in the Department's live table 615, which is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-dwelling-stock-including-vacants.

This table shows the annual total numbers of empty homes and those vacant longer than six months and also vacants in the local authority, housing association and other public sector tenures

The number of long-term vacant dwellings across England remains lower than when records began.