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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment has he made of the adequacy of the contract procurement processes used by local authorities for house building.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities does not assess the local authority contract management process for house building. The Government supports local authorities to deliver new housing. Local authorities are independent statutory bodies, accountable to their local electorate and have the autonomy to develop their own housebuilding programmes. The National Procurement Policy Statement, published in June, sets out strategic priorities for public procurement and the expectation that contracting authorities will benchmark procurement capability.

We encourage local authorities to develop housebuilding plans and have taken a number of steps to support councils to deliver new homes. In March 2021 we announced greater freedoms for councils to spend the money they receive from Right to Buy sales on replacement homes. In May 2021, Homes England launched a Local Government Capacity Centre to provide councils with practical support to build their housebuilding skills and capacity. This is on top of Government's commitment to invest over £12 billion in affordable housing over 5 years, the largest investment in affordable housing in a decade, which includes the £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme that councils are able to bid for. We want to see local authorities using the range of tools available to deliver a new generation of council housing.