§ 79. Mr. Randallasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government if he is now in a position to publish figures of 37W local housing authorities who have informed him of the cessation of their house building programmes, in view of the withdrawal of subsidies and higher interest charges.
§ Mr. H. BrookeThe information for which the 1,468 local authorities have been asked is the number of tenders they propose to let in the current financial year. 202 have submitted a nil return; but this does not necessarily mean that they have stopped building or will in fact do so. Some of them are known to have let new tenders since making the return. Most authorities are still building, and many—though I do not know how many—will let new tenders after the end of March. Various factors may cause local authorities to suspend or modify their house building programmes: as a rule they do not give reasons for what they propose.