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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he will take to monitor the loss to development of land in England and Wales during the UN International Year of Soils in 2015.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has previously published national statistics on Land Use Change. These statistics report the amount of undeveloped land, including agricultural land, changing to a developed use changing to a developed use.

In 2013, the Department let a tender to secure these statistics and a 30 per cent reduction in costs using an innovative new methodology. The first publication of these new statistics will cover the year 2013-14 and has been provisionally announced for June/July 2015. Subsequent years publications will be preannounced for publication in due course.