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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the level of substandard housing in the private sector in (a) Poplar and Limehouse constituency and (b) the UK.

My department publishes the English Housing Survey, which provides information on the housing stock in England including the decency of homes in the private rented sector. The survey reported that in 2008 44 per cent of privately rented homes did not meet the Decent Homes Standard, but that this had improved to 25 per cent by 2018. English Housing Survey results can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/english-housing-survey.

The English Housing Survey does not provide data at a constituency level and this information is not held by this department. However, local authorities have an obligation under the Housing Act 2004 to keep housing conditions in their area under review for all tenures, including the private rented sector, so this information may therefore be held by the relevant local authority.