Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when his Department plans to publish housing projections for 2012; and what those projections were for (a) Northumberland and (b) Ponteland.

The Department is working on the 2012-based Household Projections and publication is planned for February 2015.

The same methodology is being used as for the 2011-based projections. This means that the ONS 2012-based population projections (already published at local authority level) provide a good initial indication of likely household growth to feed into local authorities’ assessments of housing requirements.

Household projections are a starting point for local authority assessments of housing need but local factors are also important. It is for local planning authorities to determine the impact that they have on their Local Plans, which will inevitably differ from area to area.

The specific publication date will be pre-announced in the usual way for National Statistics.