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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2014, Official Report, column 118W, on housing construction, whether he anticipates that affordable housing starts will rise or fall in 2014-15 compared to 2013-14.

My Department does not publish forecasts or targets for overall house building, including for individual years of specific programmes. As mentioned in the previous answer, we are taking practical steps to encourage starts on site of affordable homes funded by the Homes and Communities Agency in order to avoid any hiatus caused by the ending of the current Affordable Homes Programme in March 2015.

Our 2011-15 Affordable Housing Programme is on course to deliver 170,000 new affordable homes and our 2015-18 Affordable Housing Programme will deliver a further 165,000 new affordable homes (the fastest rate of affordable house building for 20 years).