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18 Mar 2008 : Column 969W—continued
Housing: Low Incomes
Matthew Taylor:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many (a) council owned and (b) social dwellings were sold in (i)
Cornwall, (ii) the south-west and (iii) England in each year since 1997. [189730]
Mr. Iain Wright: Sales of social housing are from local authorities and registered social landlords. We do not have information on other public sector housing sales. The following table shows numbers of sales to tenants by local authorities and registered social landlords through right to buy and other sales. Transfers from local authorities to registered social landlords are excluded. Figures are shown for England and the south-west region from 1998-99 to 2006-07. For Cornwall, the table includes local authority sales only, as figures for registered social landlords are not available at this level.
| Local authority (LA) and registered social landlord (RSL) sales to tenants: right to buy (RTB) and other sales | |||||||||
| 1998-99 | 1999-2000 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 | 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | |
| (1) Estimate therefore rounded. Sources : P1B returns from local authorities to Communities and Local Government, and Regulatory Statistical Return and other information from registered social landlords to the Housing Corporation. | |||||||||
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether funding from the Housing Corporation’s budget for affordable housing which is unspent may be carried forward to the next financial year. [193725]
Mr. Iain Wright: Final decisions on carry forward of unspent budgets are made each year, generally in the autumn, and are subject to Treasury agreement. However, the provision of new affordable housing is a priority for this Government and this will be a significant factor in any decision on carry forward.
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate she has made of the (a) proportion and (b) amount of the Housing Corporation’s budget for affordable housing which will be spent by the end of 2007-08. [193726]
Mr. Iain Wright: The Housing Corporation is currently forecasting to spend its full budget of £2 billion this financial year.
Rosie Cooper: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what steps her Department is taking to increase access to affordable housing for first-time buyers in (a) West Lancashire constituency and (b) nationally. [193949]
Mr. Iain Wright: In July 2007 my right hon. friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) announced an £8 billion investment programme for affordable housing in 2008-11, a £3 billion increase compared to the previous three years. As part of this programme we are committed to delivering at least 70,000 more affordable homes a year by 2010. This includes 25,000 shared ownership and shared equity homes a year funded mainly by the Housing Corporation.
We are committed to helping more people into partial ownership on a shared equity basis. The Chancellor announced, in the Budget, that from April this year two new equity loans will be available through the Government's shared equity scheme Open Market HomeBuy (OMHB). The loans provide first time buyers with more flexibility in the percentage of the value of their home that can be borrowed—to a maximum of 50 per cent.—and more choice in the mortgage they can take out.
In the period 2006-08, we have invested approximately £1.3 million through the Housing Corporation on affordable housing in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Over the next three years we will be investing a further £526 million on affordable housing in the North West.
Housing: Standards
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the indicative targets for the number of homes to be demolished in each housing market renewal pathfinder area are for each of the next three years. [193783]
Mr. Iain Wright: Funding allocations for the Housing Market Renewal programme for 2008-11 were announced on 28 February and the HMR pathfinders are in the process of revising their business plans accordingly. As before, the programme will deliver a mix of new build, refurbishment and demolition. Latest estimates for 2008-11 are set out in the following table:
| Refurbishment | New build | Demolition | |
As these estimates demonstrate, rates of demolition will remain far lower than those for refurbishment and new build.
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate she has made of the average cost of compliance with the lifetime homes standard for an individual property. [194019]
Mr. Iain Wright: In ‘Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods—A National Strategy for Housing in an Ageing Society’, launched on 25 February 2008, we estimated that “compliance with the lifetime homes standards could result in modest additional costs of around £547 per new home.”
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answers to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) of 18 February 2008, Official Report, column 39W, on housing: standards, if she will publish the table with figures for local authority dwellings and housing association dwellings listed separately. [194366]
Mr. Iain Wright: The information requested is provided in the following table. The figures represent the estimated expenditure maintaining the housing stock condition including the Decent Homes standard over the last nine years.
| £ billion | |||
| Total investment | LA | RSL | |
| Note: Figures may not add up due to rounding. | |||
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