§ Mr. Kaufmanasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will state the latest estimate of the number of council houses a council needs to sell in order to obtain the funds to build a new one.
§ Mr. Heseltine[pursuant to his reply, 26 November 1982, c. 595]: On average, the sale of a council house yields £4,500 initially in cash terms, of which 50 per cent. can be added to the authority's housing capital expenditure allocation. The remaining £5,100 of the average sale price of £9,600 will subsequently be received in cash over the life of the mortgage and can be used in the same way as the initial £4,500. The average cost of building a new council house—including flats—is estimated at £23,500. Local authorities can use the whole of the cash receipts from sales to finance their housing programmes up to the permissible level of their capital expenditure.