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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent estimate his Department has made of the average demand for additional social rent homes per year; and what steps his Department is taking to support councils and housing associations meet that demand.

It is for local authorities to identify the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including those who require affordable housing, and reflect this in planning and other policies.

Building more social and affordable homes is a priority for this Government, and we want to see local authorities playing a key role in the delivery of new housing. Our £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme, which councils can bid for, will deliver up to 180,000 affordable homes should economic conditions allow. This is on top of our £9 billion Shared Ownership and Affordable Homes Programme, running to 2023, which will deliver approximately 250,000 new affordable homes.

The Government wants to see local authorities delivering the next generation of council housing and we have given them a comprehensive range of tools to do so. In March 2021, we announced a package of reforms to give councils more freedom in how they can spend the money they receive from Right to Buy sales on replacement homes. In addition to this, the Government abolished the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) borrowing cap in 2018, allowing councils to borrow to build more council homes.