§ Mrs. Haymanasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will (a) publish in the Official Report the amounts of local authority housing allocation blocks one, two and three for local authorities (a) Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Essex and East Anglia in 1977 together with the amounts etither over- or under-spent and (b) give the allocations for 1978–79 together with the allowances spent to date.
§ Mr. Armstrong:Copies of the housing allocations for 1977–78 were placed in the Library of the House on 14th October 1977; similar arrangements were made on 9th January 1978 for the 1978–79 allocations. I would invite my hon. Friend to seek information on spending from the individual local authorities.
§ Mr. Lofthouseasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the anticipated underspending of the housing finance programme as a whole, and in particular the anticipated underspending on block 1 for the financal year 1978–79; 321W which local authorities are failing to take advantage of moneys allocated to them; and what are the reasons for the under-spending in the authorities concerned.
§ Mr. Freeson:The eventual level of spending in 1978–79 will depend upon the extent to which local authorities respond to encouragement to take up their capital allocations. Estimates for the first half year suggest that about 40 per cent. of the national total allocation was spent in that period. If that trend were to continue, the possible underspent for the year as a whole could be at least £150 million, much of it in block 1 programmes. The national estimate of spending is based upon an aggregation of returns from individual authorites and embraces a variety of individual patterns of spending from quarter to quarter. We do not, therefore, think that it would be helpful to name individual authorities at this stage.