Housing Benefit – Parliamentary Written Answer

Jack Dromey: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 14 June 2012, Official Report, column 600W, on housing benefit, whether the increase in expenditure on housing benefit since the original impact assessment from the affordable rent model will be funded from the Homes and Communities Agency's budget.

Grant Shapps: Housing providers' response to the Affordable Homes programme exceeded our original expectations. As a result, we now expect to be able to deliver 80,000 new affordable homes through the Affordable Homes programme, compared to our expectation of 56,000 at the time of the affordable rent impact assessment.  This positive response means that we now expect to deliver a total of 170,000 new affordable homes over this spending review period, through a total investment of £19.5 billion public and private funding.