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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of providing councils with the power to manage properties currently owned by housing associations.

No such assessment has been made. The government believes that both local authorities and housing associations have an important role to play in building and managing the affordable homes this country needs. Making housing associations subject to local authority control would result in them being reclassified to the public sector, thereby adding their debt (currently £77 billion) to the Public Sector Net Debt.