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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Greenhalgh on 3 December (HL10515), what assessment they have made of the extent of the transfer of funding through the New Homes Bonus scheme from (1) poorer local authorities to richer ones, (2) local authorities in the north of England to those in the south of England,  and (3) areas where current housing conditions are worse than those where new housing is financially more profitable.

The New Homes Bonus is a housing incentive designed to encourage and reward local authorities and communities for welcoming housing growth in their area. Funding for the Bonus is provided from a top slice of Revenue Support Grant and as such it is included in Core Spending Power (CSP), which is a measure of the overall resources available to local authorities to fund mainstream services. The distributional impacts of CSP are assessed as part of the proposals for the annual local government finance settlement, which are presented to Parliament each year. We will be consulting local government on the future of the New Homes Bonus shortly.