Ms Laura Behan:

I will take the disability question first. Every local authority in the country is very cognisant of the needs of people with disabilities for both social and affordable housing. In fact, in our scoring schemes and our approval of funding for affordable housing, we give additional marks. They are incentivised for funding to be provided to public authorities that are making provision for housing for older people or people with disabilities. We have seen a number of local authorities take on building affordable housing that is accessible that might be considered universal design and making it available for both older people and people with disabilities. That is still very much to the forefront of our thinking.

On the question of an accounting, a census-type, approach to meeting needs, local authorities put in place housing delivery action plans five years ago in 2022 at the time of Housing for All. At that time, taking the results of the housing need and demand assessment, we asked local authorities to consider what the full expected extent of affordable housing need would be in their areas over the five-year period and to set out, given that they would have had a targeted level of their own delivery - and there were other schemes at their disposal such as AHBs, the LDA delivery, first home scheme and so on - in a mapped way how that affordable housing need would be met over the course of the next five years. We are updating all that information, the housing need and demand assessment, and a new set of housing delivery action plans will be prepared by local authorities with full sight of the expected level of need in their areas and the level of targeted delivery that all the various different affordable and social housing delivery partners will be able to provide within their area.