Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-102)

14 JUNE 2004

MRS MARGARET FORD AND MR DAVID HIGGINS

  Q100 Andrew Bennett: Where are we up to now with the Housing Gap Funding Scheme?

  Mr Higgins: Our draft guidance package went out in June of 2003; it became live at the end of last year. We are using it on a number of schemes. There are three that I know of that are going through appraisal at the moment from Norwich to Southwark.

  Q101 Andrew Bennett: Appraisal, but not actually building.

  Mr Higgins: No, the scheme only came live at the end of last year.

  Q102 Andrew Bennett: Your predecessor, or maybe several predecessors back, the chair or English Partnerships, used to measure success by the amount of floor space that was developed or available for industry. How would you rate your success in terms of houses that have been built in the last two years?

  Mrs Ford: We had our targets changed by ODPM in the course of this year to reflect the new remit that I spoke about, and we have a range of output targets which still contain commercial floor space, housing starts in a year and housing completions a year and so on. We are in the middle of finalising those numbers. They will be audited and laid before Parliament in two or three weeks' time. I do not have the exact figures with me, but I can say to you that my sense so far is that it is a much better performance from English Partnerships than the last two or three years, across all of our targets.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for coming along.





 
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