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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans his Department has to increase the provision of (a) affordable housing and (b) social housing in (i) London and (ii) England.

The government is committed to increasing the supply of social housing and has made £9 billion available through the Affordable Homes Programme to March 2022 to deliver approximately 250,000 new affordable homes of a wide range of tenures, including social rent. £4.8 billion of this will be for London, to deliver 116,000 new affordable homes.

Since 2010 we have delivered 430,000 affordable homes, including 134,000 homes for social rent. A quarter of this delivery was in London, where we have build 88,500 affordable homes.

The government has brought social housing waiting lists down by over half a million since 2010. We have also given councils the tools to deliver a new generation of council housing by removing the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap, so they can deliver the homes their communities need, and we expect to see net increases in social housing stock in the years to come.

On 18 September 2018 we announced an additional £2 billion of long term funding certainty for housing associations. This extra funding will deliver more affordable homes and stimulate the sector’s wider building ambitions, through strategic partnerships.

On 27 June 2019, we opened bidding on £1 billion of this funding through Homes England. We are working closely with the Greater London Authority (GLA) to open bidding on £1 billion for London as soon as possible. Our ten year funding commitment through strategic partnerships marks the first time any government has invested such long-term funding in new homes through housing associations.