§ Mr. Chris SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) if he will publish a table showing for each region in England his Department's assessment of the current shortfalls of rented housing in relation to local needs;
(2) what is the deficiency in the quantity of housing available through housing associations and local authorities for rent in each region of England; what research is being carried out by his Department on the deficiency; and when he will report on the findings of such research;
(3) what assumptions about the future rented housing demand he makes in determining the number of homes to be started by housing associations and local authorities each year; and on what factual information he bases those assumptions;
(4) if he intends to prepare and publish a review of projected housing need in relation to this Department's funding of rented housing programmes;
(5) if he will list the allocations his Department has made in 1990–91 and 1991–92 to increase the supply of rented homes in areas where housing shortages exist; the estimated number of additional homes that will result from these allocations and his Department's estimate of the shortages that will remain after these homes have been built;
(6) what steps his Department takes to measure any shortfall between the supply and demand for rented housing provided by housing associations and local authorities each year.
§ Sir George YoungEstimates of need for subsidised housing are not susceptible to precise quantification, depending as they do both on subjective judgment of what constitutes need, and on factors affecting access to owner occupation, such as interest rates and house prices, which can vary in the short term. We nevertheless take account of indicators of housing need in the allocation of capital resources to housing associations—which are now the main providers of new subsidised housing—and to local authorities. The housing needs indicator, reviewed each year jointly by my Department, the Housing Corporation and the National Federation of Housing Associations, and used in allocation of resources to Housing Corporation regions, incorporates factors such as homelessness, overcrowding, the household-dwelling balance and the accessibility of owner-occupation; allocation of resources to associations within regions is a matter for the Housing Corporation, which takes these and other factors into account. The generalised needs index, used in allocation of resources to local authorities and determined following consultation with the local authority associations, also includes these factors, with a lower weighting because most authorities' capital expenditure is on renovation of their existing stock.
Various projects in the Department's housing research programme are designed to improve our knowledge of housing need. I announced the capital allocations to local authorities for 1991–92 on 13 December, Official Report, columns 463–64, and the regional distribution of the Housing Corporation's approval development programme on 13 February, Official Report, columns 470–1. I shall write to the hon. Member with fuller etails of the 753W composition of the housing needs indicator and the generalised needs index and of the housing research programme.
We have recognised that there are shortages of subsidised rented housing in some areas and we have provided resources for a substantial increase in output by housing associations, from 21,000 in 1989–90 to 40,000 in 1993–94; details are given in my Department's annual report (Cm. 1508), paragraphs 7.35 to 7.38 and figures 70 and 71. Availability of resources for subsidised housing is considered in the public expenditure survey each year.