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Council Housing: Finance

Volume 477: debated on Monday 16 June 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the historic debt outstanding against council house construction was in (a) cash terms and (b) as a proportion of the public sector borrowing requirement in each year since 1990; and what projections her Department has made for these figures in the future, including borrowing supported by arm's length management organisations. (203536)

The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) capital financing requirement (CFR) is a measure of HRA debt. It is a "stock" which is rolled forward each year to take account of new borrowing for HRA purposes. The HRA CFR from 1992-93 to 2007-08 is set out in the following table. We cannot differentiate the purpose for which the debt was taken out.

The HRA CFR increases by the value of new borrowing every year and decreases by the value of principal repaid every year. The decline in HRA debt, from 1994-95 to 2004-05, shows that local authorities have been repaying more debt than they have been taking out. We would expect to see this as until 2004-05 local authorities were compelled to set-aside money to repay debt and this was taken into consideration in the calculation of their HRA debt level, and hence a reduction in the percentages of housing revenue account capital financing charge as public sector net debt.

Public sector net debt (PSND) is the main measure of national debt used in the Government's fiscal policy framework. PSND records financial liabilities issued by the public sector less its holdings of liquid financial assets. Public sector includes central Government, local government and public corporations.

PSND (£)

HRA debt (£)

HRA debt/PSND (percentage)

1992-93

202,600,000,000

20,039,091,106

9.89

1993-94

249,800,000,000

20,386,546,784

8.16

1994-95

290,000,000,000

20,818,339,121

7.18

1995-96

322,100,000,000

20,648,130,105

6.41

1996-97

348,000,000,000

20,212,328,553

5.81

1997-98

352,900,000,000

19,708,079,143

5.58

1998-99

351,600,000,000

19,029,932,961

5.41

1999-2000

345,400,000,000

18,487,181,937

5.35

2000-01

312,400,000,000

17,606,728,155

5.64

2001-02

315,500,000,000

17,592,048,166

5.58

2002-03

347,100,000,000

16,425,428,521

4.73

2003-04

382,800,000,000

14,009,766,512

3.66

2004-05

423,600,000,000

12,889,346,585

3.04

2005-06

463,000,000,000

13,307,369,486

2.87

2006-07

499,500,000,000

14,519,552,650

2.91

2007-08

527,700,000,000

15,480,866,859

2.93

Notes: 1. No distinction is drawn between debt for new construction and debt for refurbishment. They are all included in the overall figures. 2. From 2001-02 onwards the Department did not collect data on local authority borrowing for spending on their council housing from those authorities with no notional housing debt (used in calculating HRA subsidy entitlement).

Projections of future borrowing are budget allocations for the spending review period 2008-11 and are in the following table:

£

LA SCE(R) for spend on LA stock

Additional LA borrowing for ALMOs

2008-09

272,418,000

809,000,000

2009-10

269,190,000

809,000,000

2010-11

258,755,000

759,000,000

Note: 1. The forecast figures for 2008-09 to 2010-11 reflect the estimated level of supported capital expenditure (revenue) and additional LA borrowing for ALMOs to be supported by DCLG, rather than any actual level of borrowing that authorities may enter into. How much actual future debt each individual local authority holds will be a Treasury management decision for that authority.