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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure the private rented sector remains affordable for residents in (a) Newcastle upon Tyne and (b) the North East.

The Government is committed to improving affordability in the private rented sector and the key to this is building more homes. We have introduced several initiatives to tackle this, including a £3 billion Home Building Fund, £1 billion of which is available to provide development finance for homes across a range of tenures, including Build to Rent. Our Build to Rent Fund provided over £630 million of development finance for the supply of new privately rented homes in England. Our £10 billion debt guarantee scheme will support the delivery of new homes purpose build for private rent and over 30,000 additional affordable homes across England.

However, the Government recognises that building more homes will take time. The Government therefore recently announced at the Queen’s Speech that it will publish a draft Bill to set out its proposals to ban letting fees to tenants in England to improve transparency, affordability and competition in the private rental market. A ban will enable tenants to see - at a glance –what a given property will cost them in the advertised rent level and ensure they aren’t hit by surprise fees they may struggle to afford. The approach taken in the draft Bill will be informed by the recent consultation and publishing the Bill in draft will enable scrutiny of our proposals to ban letting fees by Parliament and stakeholders ahead of introducing legislation.