HC Deb 19 May 1993 vol 225 cc181-2W
Sir James Spicer

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is the Housing Corporation's latest estimate of the output from its approved development programme in 1992–93.

Mr. Baldry

The Housing Corporation estimates that in the last financial year its approved development programme will have funded the provision of at least 60,000 new homes. Final figures will be available next month. Together with the 6,000 homes which the corporation estimates have been provided by local authority housing association grants, this means that public funds enabled housing associations to make an estimated 66,000 extra homes available to new tenants last year.

I regret that in recent answers to the House and in the Adjournment debate on 26 April, my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and I said that the Housing Corporation's estimate was 80,000 homes. The corporation has since informed me that in making this estimate it miscalculated the output from its programme. I am grateful for the opportunity to inform the House of this correction. I have written separately to the hon. Members concerned.