§ Mr. PikeTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister when he will announce the money being allocated to Burnley to tackle the problem of empty homes as part of the East Lancashire Housing Renewal pathfinder project. [65551]
§ Mr. RaynsfordWe announced on 16 May that we were making available £25 million from the Capital Modernisation Fund to assist low demand pathfinder projects in vital preparatory work, in equal shares of £2.66 million (£1 million will be retained centrally for collective monitoring and evaluation). That funding will, importantly, not be distributed to individual local authorities but to the pathfinder project as a whole. We are considering the case for further investment to tackle low demand, over and above that which local authorities and others already devote to tackling the problem, in the spending review.