Question
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their statement that “there is a shortage of affordable housing, particularly for local workers” in rural areas in their response on 2 July 2019 to the report by the Select Committee on the Rural Economy Time for a strategy for the rural economy (HL Paper 330, Session 2017–19), what is the net increase in affordable homes in rural areas since July 2019.
Answer
This Government believes that meeting the housing needs of rural communities is important and nearly 165,000 affordable homes have been provided in rural local authorities in England between April 2010 and March 2019.
We are investing £12.2 billion in affordable housing over 5 years from next year (2021-2026). This represents the highest single funding commitment to affordable housing in a decade.
This investment includes the new £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme which will be delivered over 5 years from next year (2021-2026), providing up to 180,000 new homes across the country, should economic conditions allow. Homes England’s funding prospectus for this supports the delivery of rural housing, with the commitment of 10% of the housing delivered to be in settlements with a population fewer than 3,000. Furthermore, Homes England has dedicated rural housing champions in each of their operating areas and they remain active across the rural housing sector.
The department collects annual data on new affordable housing supply but does not collect all the data required on disposals of affordable housing that would allow to calculate the net change in affordable housing in rural areas.
The latest available official statistics on new affordable housing supply are for 2018-19. The publication of the statistics for 2019-20 has been provisionally pre-announced for 3rd December 2020.