Social Housing (Hansard, 6 February 2001)

Mr. Robert Ainsworth

This Government are taking a number of steps to improve housing conditions in both rural and urban areas.

We have set a target to bring all social housing up to a decent standard by 2010. This target will be delivered through a range of investment options available to local authorities and through a significant increase in resources for housing. An extra £1.8 billion is being made available over the next three years to improve existing stock and provide new affordable housing.

In our recent housing policy statement "The way forward for housing" we have set out a range of proposals to tackle poor conditions in the private sector. These will give local authorities more flexibility to help poorer home owners with repairs to their homes and make it easier for them to target interventions on concentrations of poor condition stock in the private sector.

Our Rural White Paper "Our Countryside: the future. A fair deal for rural England", published last year, set out our strategy for delivering more affordable housing in rural areas.

This strategy includes ensuring the housing needs of rural areas are properly assessed and planned for in local housing strategies. We have significantly increased resources for delivering new affordable housing, by nearly doubling the Housing Corporation's Approved Development Programme with an extra £872 million over the next three years. We will double the number of affordable homes provided through the Housing Corporation's rural programme in settlements of less than 3,000 people over the next three years.

We are also encouraging local authorities to fund new social housing in rural areas where there is high demand, using additional resources allocated to them. We want local authorities to make greater use of their planning powers to negotiate the provision of affordable housing as part of new private housing developments.