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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the level of debt accrued by local authorities in their housing revenue accounts during the covid-19 outbreak; and what steps he is taking to support local authorities that have accrued that debt.

The Government has continued to monitor the effect of Covid-19 and consequential pressures on local authorities and their housing revenue accounts.

In the last year, the Government has provided additional support for local authorities by extending the quarterly expenditure deadlines for returning unused Right to Buy receipts for the whole of 2020/21, introducing a lower Public Works Loan Board rate for housing revenue account borrowing, and extending the existing £9 billion Affordable Homes Programme for a year to preserve developments that might otherwise have been lost following site closures and delays.

Authorities are subject to the constraints of the Prudential Code, which means that no authority can borrow more than it can afford to service.