Social Rented Housing: Construction

(asked on 28th October 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the build rate for new social and council housing.


Answered by
Christopher Pincher Portrait
Christopher Pincher
This question was answered on 4th November 2021

It is for local planning authorities to define what homes are required in their areas, as they are best placed to understand the needs of their communities. The Government is committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing and is investing over £12 billion, the largest investment in affordable housing in a decade.

This includes the new £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme, which will provide up to 180,000 new homes across the country, should economic conditions allow. 32,000 of these will be for social rent and half will be for affordable home ownership. We have also introduced measures to make it easier for local authorities to build new affordable homes.

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 to help them build more council homes. This is on top of the removal of Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap in 2018, enabling local authorities greater flexibility to borrow for building.

Reticulating Splines