Huw Irranca-Davies
Main Page: Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour - Ogmore)
Mr Pickles
Chippenham is the apple of my eye, a wonderful town. My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. Although the Portas review will help, we are giving local authorities the chance to be in the driving seat, to see that where they generate income they will be able to apply that locally. Increasingly, the Government have demonstrated localism, not just by words but by deeds, by shifting the power and particularly by shifting the finance closer to the people.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
15. What estimate he has made of the number of new homes which will be built in 2012.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
The Government do not make forecasts of house building, but we look carefully at what has happened in the past. In 2007 there were 178,000 housing starts. By 2009, the last full year of the previous Government, that had crashed to 78,340. In 2011, the first full year of the coalition Government, it had risen to 98,250—a rise of 25%.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I thank the Minister for that array of facts, but the Housing Minister said that the gold standard by which this Government would be judged was building more houses than Labour, yet, according to the recorded figures, in the first 18 months of this Government new housing completions are down 11% compared with the last 18 months of the Labour Government. Has the Minister devalued his own gold standard?
Andrew Stunell
In 2011 the figure included 1,500 local authority starts. Interestingly, in 2009 there were only 150 local authority housing starts. Since September the Homes and Communities Agency has completed agreements on 112 social and affordable housing projects worth £1.6 billion. The first of the homes will start on site in April.