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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of proposals to impose mandatory rent reductions on social landlords of one per cent each year for four years on housing co-operatives which have had a policy of maintaining low levels of rent.

The Housing Benefit bill for England in the social sector now has risen by a quarter over the last 10 years, reaching £13.2 billion in 2014/15. Rising rents in the social housing sector are fuelling this increase in Housing Benefit, with average social rent increases of 55% over the last ten years, compared to 23% in the private rented sector. In the interests of fairness the Government plans to bring rent increases within the social sector back into line with the private rented sector by cutting rents for social housing tenants by 1% a year, for four years.

The Government recognises that rent reductions may have a bigger impact on some providers and some specific types of housing and has decided to put in place a one-year exception from the rent reduction for fully mutual co-operative housing, almshouses, community land trusts and supported housing while we consider the approach for the second year of the reductions onwards.