Housing: Inherited Social Housing Tenancies

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

Can my noble friend tell the House roughly how many people in this country are living in overcrowded conditions or are on housing waiting lists? Can he also put on the record the number of new social houses being built by this Government and compare that with the number built by the previous Government, because, clearly, housebuilding and social housebuilding are crucial?

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend draws the comparison between the amount of capacity that we have in this country and the demand for it. The number of people on the waiting list is 1.8 million, with the figure for overcrowding running at 250,000 on some estimates and 400,000 on others.

When this Government took office, we were left with the lowest level of peacetime housebuilding that this country had seen since the 1920s. Since then we have delivered nearly 400,000 new homes and put in very substantial investment. There is £11.5 billion public investment to boost housing supply over the four years of the spending review, and this is meant to lever in more private investment. The volume of housebuilding is now picking up. The starts in the quarter to December were up 20% compared with the same period last year.