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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the abilities of local authorities to renegotiate their housing revenue account debt settlement under the provisions of the Localism Act 2011.

In 2012, the Government agreed self-financing settlements with local authorities that held housing revenue accounts. Debt levels were calculated and rebalanced across those local authorities with housing revenue accounts (HRAs), so that authorities could repay loans without jeopardising expenditure on necessary day-to-day expenditure on management, maintenance, and major repairs. There are no current plans to revisit the self-financing settlement.

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