Council Housing Bob Spink To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 15 June 2009, Official Report, column 20W, on housing, in which local authorities the schemes are being operated. Mr. Ian Austin As at April 2009 Choice Based Lettings housing allocations schemes were being operated in the following local authorities in England: Adur Amber Valley Arun Ashford Barking and Dagenham Barnet Barnsley Basildon Bassetlaw Bath and North East Somerset Birmingham Blackburn with Darwen Blackpool Bolton Boston Bournemouth Bradford Braintree Brent Brentwood Brighton and Hove Bristol Broadland Bromley Bromsgrove Broxbourne Bury Calderdale Cambridge Camden Canterbury Carlisle Chelmsford Cherwell Cheshire West and Chester Chesterfield Chichester City of London Colchester Cornwall Cotswold Coventry Crawley Croydon Dacorum Dartford Derby Derbyshire Dales Doncaster Dover Dudley Durham Ealing East Cambridgeshire East Devon East Dorset East Hampshire East Hertfordshire East Northamptonshire East Staffordshire Eastbourne Eastleigh Enfield Epping Forest Epsom and Ewell Erewash Exeter Fareham Fenland Forest Heath Fylde Gateshead Gosport Gravesham Great Yarmouth Greenwich Guildford Hackney Hammersmith and Fulham Harborough Haringey Harlow Harrow Hart Hastings Havant Havering Herefordshire, County of Hertsmere High Peak Hillingdon Hounslow Huntingdonshire Islington Kensington and Chelsea Kettering King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Kingston upon Hull, City of Kingston upon Thames Lambeth Leeds Lewes Lewisham Lichfield Lincoln Liverpool Maidstone Malvern Hills Manchester Mansfield Medway Mendip Merton Mid Devon Middlesbrough Mole Valley New Forest Newark and Sherwood Newcastle upon Tyne Newham North East Derbyshire North Somerset Northampton Northumberland Norwich Nottingham Oldham Oxford Peterborough Plymouth Poole Preston Purbeck Reading Redbridge Redditch Reigate and Banstead Rochdale Rother Rotherham Rushmoor Salford Sandwell Sedgemoor Sefton Sevenoaks Sheffield Shepway Shropshire Solihull South Cambridgeshire South Derbyshire South Gloucestershire South Norfolk South Oxfordshire South Ribble South Somerset South Staffordshire South Tyneside Southampton Southend-on-Sea Southwark St. Edmundsbury St. Helens Stevenage Stockport Stoke-on-Trent Stratford-on-Avon Sunderland Surrey Heath Sutton Swale Swindon Tameside Tandridge Taunton Deane Telford and Wrekin Test Valley Thanet Three Rivers Thurrock Tonbridge and Malling Torbay Tower Hamlets Trafford Tunbridge Wells Uttlesford Vale of White Horse Wakefield Walsall Waltham Forest Warrington Warwick Waveney Waverley Wealden West Berkshire West Devon West Somerset Westminster Weymouth and Portland Wigan Wiltshire Winchester Wirral Woking Worcester Wychavon Wyre Wyre Forest York Grant Shapps To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 7 May 2009, Official Report, column 383W, on council housing (1) which organisations undertook the external research; on what subjects; and how much was paid to each such organisation; (2) on what dates the external research for the review of council housing finance was commissioned. Mr. Ian Austin The information requested is in the following table. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Research |Date commissioned|Researcher |Cost (£)|Purpose of research | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Evaluation of Management and Maintenance costs|2 July 2008 |Housing Quality Network |44,330 |To determine the costs of running the day to day landlord service (including redistribution analysis and housemark data provision)| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Review of the Major Repairs Allowance |1 September 2008 |Building Research Establishment |50,835 |Analysis of the need to spend on major repairs of the housing stock in order to maintain the Decent Homes standard | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Tenant Focus Groups |9 September 2008 |GFK-NOP |28,898 |Analysis of tenant attitudes towards council housing finance and rents policy | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Rents Analysis |2 October 2008 |Professor Steve Wilcox, University of York|18,500 |A set of briefings and analysis on rents and related topics to inform the HRA review | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Processing of Tenant Questionnaires |28 October 2008 |Sharp Research |8,550 |— | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Debt Analysis |19 November 2008 |Tribal |16,400 |Analysis of the options for dealing with debt in local authority housing. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other research expense included ongoing advice from the CLG expert panel and use of the Housing Corporation residents panels through the second half of 2008 totalling around £30,000.