Social Housing Providers: Section 106

14. If she will take steps to support social housing providers to fund houses made available under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

I recognise that social housing providers need support to build their capacity and make a greater contribution to affordable housing supply, including via section 106. To assist in that, we have proposed a new five-year social housing rent settlement and permitted councils to keep all their right-to-buy receipts.

I know that my hon. Friend is committed to increasing the provision of social housing. In the past few years, most social housing has been provided through section 106 agreements. According to the National Housing Federation, thousands of houses around the country are available but cannot be purchased under section 106 agreements because registered social landlords simply do not have the resources. I am sure that he is aware of that problem, but does he have any plans to deal with it and bring those houses, which are badly needed, back into use?

The Government certainly recognise the ongoing challenge posed by the reduced appetite of registered providers of social housing to buy affordable homes delivered under section 106 agreements. As I hope my hon. Friend is aware, the Homes England section 106 affordable housing clearing service was launched back in December alongside the revised national planning policy framework, with the aim of supporting buyers and sellers of section 106 homes to find each other more effectively. We are calling on all developers with uncontracted section 106 affordable homes, as well as providers and local planning authorities, to engage proactively with that new service. We will consider what further measures may be necessary to address the problem, informed by data from that service.

Private developers in my constituency have obligations to build social homes under section 106, and they are ready to do so. The difficulty they face is that there is no social landlord available to take those units. When I raised this issue with the Deputy Prime Minister in October, she said that she was aware of the problem and was working to tackle it. Will the Minister update the House on the progress made?

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman heard my previous answer, but I have just made it clear that we acted on 12 December to establish a matching service. I would advise him to ask the developers whether they have taken advantage of that service. We want to learn lessons from the data that comes out of it to see whether we need to take further steps. We think that the matching service will allow registered providers and developers trying to offload section 106 units to come together to see if agreements can be reached.