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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent estimate he has made of trends in the number of landlords using (a) licence agreements, and (b) tenancy agreements.

The Department has made no estimate. The Government monitors broad trends in housing, including the number of households in rented housing, through the English Housing Survey.

The English Housing Survey Headline Report 2016-17 reported that the private rented sector accounted for 4.7 million or 20 per cent of households. The social rented sector accounted for 3.9 million households or 17 per cent of households. There was no change in the size of either sector between 2015-16 and 2016-17.