To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate she has made of the average age of first time house buyers in (a) the West Cornwall and Isles of Scilly constituency of St Ives, (b) Cornwall and (c) each Government region in each region since 1997, broken down by sex. (155344)

Data on First Time Buyers (FTBs) are available from the regulated mortgage survey which is supplied to Communities and Local Government by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. However due to a small sample size data on the average age of FTBs at UK level are unreliable. The gender split is unavailable.

The average age of FTBs at the UK level is available on the Council of Mortgage Lenders website at http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/filegrab/2ML2.xls?ref=4624. These figures are in the following table.