§ Mr. Michael Forsythasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many council houses have been sold by the Stirling district council since May 1980; and what proportion this represents of applications received.
§ Mr. AncramFigures of council house sales reported to the Department by Stirling district council are under revision. I will write to my hon. Friend when the position has been clarified.
§ Mr. Hirstasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the average time taken to process an application to purchase a council house in Scotland.
§ Mr. AncramThe latest information, which is not wholly comprehensive, provided to me by the authorities concerned suggests that the average time taken to process an application was eleven and a half months for council houses sold during the first quarter of 1983, an average improvement of around one and a half months when compared with sales for the last nine months of 1982, the earliest period for which figures are available. Completions by the SSHA averaged around nine months and by new town development corporations five and a half months. There are, however, wide variations in the times taken to complete individual sales.
§ Mr. Hirstasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is satisfied that district councils in Scotland are processing applications to purchase council houses within a reasonable time; and if he will identify those district councils which he considers are not so doing.
§ Mr. AncramWe have made it clear to authorities our view that to take more than an average of seven months to complete the sale of a council house is unreasonable. In January my Department wrote to 19 authorities, 17 of whom appeared to be failing in their statutory duty to issue offers to sell within two months and two of whom had large conveyancing backlogs. Most of these authorities have now either provided evidence of satisfactory performance or given undertakings to improve their arrangements.
Authorities are now due to submit quarterly returns of council house sales to the end of June 1983. These will be studied in detail and if it appears that there is undue delay by any authorities in processing sales, I shall be considering what further action I should take to secure an improvement in their performance.
§ Mr. Hirstasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the total number of council houses sold in Scotland up to the latest practicable reporting date (a) by local authorities and (b) by development corporations; and what percentage these represent of the respective total housing stocks.
§ Mr. AncramHousing reported sold during the period 1 April 1979 to 31 March 1983 is as follows: 121W
Sales reported by No. of Sales Percentage of total Stock (a) Local Authorities 24,807 2.8 (b) New Town Development Corporations 6,537 12.3 In addition, the Scottish special housing association has sold 5,859 houses representing 5.6 per cent. of its stock.