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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to promote housebuilding in Stoke-on-Trent.

I refer the Hon Member to the answer given to PQ 129146 on 21 December 2020.

On a National level, further funding to support housebuilding via the National House Building Fund (NHBF) will be confirmed at the next multi-year Spending Review, delivering on the Government’s commitment to provide £10 billion to unlock homes through provision of infrastructure.

As announced in December 2020, we are also planning to launch a new £100 million Brownfield Land Release fund this month to support brownfield development, estates regeneration, development on public sector land and self and custom-build serviced plots in coming forward. This will be open to councils across England, apart from those Mayoral Combined Authority areas that recently benefited from our £400 million brownfield fund. Stoke on Trent City Council are welcome to bid for this funding and we invite councils to use the time between now and the prospectus launch to start to consider and prepare their bids.