HC Deb 15 October 1996 vol 282 cc577-8
7. Mr. Heppell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to increase the provision of social housing. [38356]

Mr. Robert B. Jones

The falling numbers of homeless, of rough sleepers and of households in temporary accommodation, show that we are already meeting need. We are also encouraging effective local authority policies to encourage the most effective use of existing housing stock.

Mr. Heppell

Is the Minister aware that there are 11,500 people on Nottingham city council's waiting list? With the social housing programme at its lowest level since the war, does the hon. Gentleman not think that it is time to allow the council to release its capital receipts of over £40 million to try to boost the housing programme and to put some of the people on the waiting list—many of them elderly or disabled—into decent, affordable housing?

Mr. Jones

Councillors are not sitting with their capital receipts money under the mattress. If we followed the hon. Gentleman's advice, there would be upward pressure on interest rates, extra borrowing and an increase in council tax. Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to come clean about that?

Mr. Batiste

Does my hon. Friend agree that social housing and all other forms of development are best established against a clear local plan? Does he therefore understand the concern that we have in Leeds that, having been through the longest planning inquiry in history and having been promised a report in 1997, we have now been told that it has been deferred to 1999? Will my hon. Friend undertake to look into the reasons for the delay and try to bring forward some certainty in our local planning, both for social housing and for everything else in our city?

Mr. Jones

I fully understand the importance of my hon. Friend's point. If we are to have a plan-led system, we must have up-to-date plans. I am discussing with officials and a wide range of people outside the Department how we might speed up the system in regard to unitary development plans. That being so, my hon. Friend makes his point at a timely moment.