Caroline Lucas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when he plans to respond to the concluding observations and recommendations of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the UK’s sixth periodic report in relation to social housing supply and homelessness; and if he will make a statement.

Gavin Barwell

In paragraph 73 of the UN recommendations, the UN requested that the UK submits its next period report under the Covenant (inclusive of a response to all the recommendations from this year’s examination) by 30 June 2021; it would therefore not be appropriate for me to pre-empt this report by anticipating what we, or indeed a future UK government in 2021, might say.

This government remains committed to tackling homelessness. That is why we have increased central government funding for homelessness programmes to £139 million over the Spending Review period. We have also maintained and protected homelessness prevention funding for local authorities through the local government finance settlement totalling £315 million by 2019/20. In the Budget we announced further commitments to prevent homelessness including £100 million to provide at least 2,000 places for vulnerable people to enable independent living; £10 million to support initiatives to prevent and reduce rough sleeping; and an increase from £5 million to £10 million to launch a Social Impact Bond to support the most entrenched rough sleepers off the streets.

This will be supported by the government’s broader commitments to increase the overall supply of housing. We remain committed to building more affordable housing, including shared ownership. More than 277,000 affordable homes have been delivered since April 2010, and the housing budget has been doubled to more than £20 billion to support the largest housing programme by any government since the 1970s, which includes £8 billion to deliver over 400,000 affordable homes.