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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department plans to take in response to the Office for Statistics Regulation report on Public value of statistics on housing and planning in the UK published in November 2017.

My Department's statistics on housing and planning give a valuable indication of success in getting more homes delivered. The main measure of this, net additional dwelling, for instance shows that in the year in which the Rt Hon Member was Minister for Housing, new housing supply fell 21 per cent, compared to a 15 per cent increase last year.

My Department’s statisticians will continue to work with official producers of housing statistics in the other UK countries, the Office for National Statistics and with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to address the recommendations in the OSR’s recent report on the public value of housing and planning statistics in the UK.

These recommendations focus on further improving the coherence, accessibility and transparency of housing and planning statistics at the UK and England levels. For example, Department for Communities and Local Government statisticians are currently piloting a new Private Landlord Survey which will improve the statistics and insight available on the private rented sector, in particular how landlords operate in that sector – one of the areas which respondents to the OSR report suggested could be improved.