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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will make it his policy to extend the Community Housing Fund to 2023; and if he will make a statement.

The Government recognises that the community-led housing sector offers significant potential for helping to meet housing need across England. In addition to helping increase the rate of delivery of new housing, it will help deliver a range of benefits including diversifying the housebuilding sector, improving design and construction quality, developing modern methods of construction, and sustaining local communities and local economies. The support and close involvement of the local community enables the community-led approach to secure planning permission and deliver housing that could not be brought forward through speculative development.

The Community Housing Fund is currently scheduled to close in March 2020. While the programme was launched relatively recently, there is still time for many community-led schemes to access funding and deliver housing, although we appreciate that this will be more difficult for very new schemes. Decisions on funding for 2020-21 onwards are a matter for the Spending Review, which will take place this year.