Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the potential effect of a removal of the borrowing cap on local authorities' housing revenue accounts on the output of new council houses.
The Government's self-financing settlement has given council landlords access to £2.8 billion additional borrowing and the freedom to plan their housing businesses for the long term. We have no plans to remove the limits on indebtedness whilst we are taking action to tackle the budget deficit inherited from the last Administration but we have been able to make available an additional £300 million borrowing over 2015/16 and 2016/17 and those councils that needed additional borrowing have now had two opportunties to bid for additional borrowing. I announced on 9 October that £178 million additional borrowing was still up for grabs in the second bidding round. We are now considering those bids. We have been able to extend this borrowing precisely because of the Government's long-term economic plan. More council housing has been built in the four years of this Government than in all the thirteen years of the last Administration combined.