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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to encourage the building of affordable housing; and how many affordable homes have been built in Essex since 2010.

Almost 217,000 affordable homes have been delivered in England since April 2010. Our Affordable Homes Programme is on track to deliver 170,000 new affordable homes between 2011 and 2015, with £19.5 billion of public and private funding. Over 144,000 homes have already been delivered

This Government has demonstrated its continued commitment to the building of affordable housing. The Government’s National Infrastructure Plan announced an extension of affordable housing capital investment to 2018-19 and 2019-20, of £1.9 billion to ensure that an average 55,000 new affordable homes a year continue to be delivered. This will bring the delivery total to 275,000 across 2015-20. This means over the next Parliament we will build more new affordable homes than during any equivalent period in the last twenty years.

Statistics on additional affordable housing, including both newly built housing and acquisitions, provided in each local authority area in England are published in the Department’s live tables 1006, 1006a, 1007 and 1008, which are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply

A table giving figures, by local authority, for affordable housing delivery in England between April 2010 and September 2014 is attached.