Housing: Construction
(asked on 7th January 2015) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the amount of New Homes Bonus funding allocated to (a) Swindon, (b) Wiltshire and (c) England in each of the last five years.
The table below sets out to the nearest £10,000 how much New Homes Bonus funding has been allocated to the unitary authorities of Swindon and Wiltshire, and to England as a whole. Figures for 2015-16 are provisional allocations announced in December last year. The figures show cumulative totals as new Homes Bonus is paid for six years.
2011-12 (£million) | 2012-13 (£million) | 2013-14 (£million) | 2014-15 (£million) | 2015-16 (£million) | Total New Homes Bonus 2011-2016 (£million) | |
Swindon | 1.45 | 2.78 | 4.01 | 5.07 | 6.10 | 19.41 |
| 1.84 | 4.59 | 7.59 | 10.90 | 14.28 | 39.20 |
England | 199.26 | 431.89 | 668.34 | 916.97 | 1,167.31 | 3,383.77 |
The New Homes Bonus rewards the delivery of additional homes and is a powerful, simple and transparent incentive for housing growth, and getting long-term empty homes back into use.
The Bonus ensures that local authorities who promote and welcome growth can share in its economic benefits, and build the communities in which people want to live and work. Councils are free to spend the Bonus as they choose, including on front-line services and keeping council tax low.
The Bonus also reverses the perverse situation under the last Labour Government, where councils were effectively penalised for building new homes; councils with a larger council tax base from house building found that the amount of formula grant they received from central government was reduced during the equalisation process.