Ms ?ine Stapleton:

The evidence of the past few years is encouraging. If we look at data for 2021, the supply that was added to the social housing stock was just over 9,100. We are waiting on the final statistical data for 2022 but we would expect that to be of the order of about 10,000 across the building acquisition and lease. For 2023, we are looking at targets of about 11,500 to 12,000. Across those three years, there is a gross addition to social housing stock of the order of 30,000 units. That is encouraging. In addition, we can see the build element of that continuing to increase.

As we look at the pipeline, we can see that local authorities are now beginning to put a strong pipeline in place. We are putting new measures in place to support them through land acquisition. We are also looking at particular measures to accelerate delivery. Towards the end of last year, the Minister was in a position to support local authorities with some land legacy debt. Linked to that, we have a programme of accelerated delivery. Taking the combination of all of the initiatives in place, we are quite confident that it is heading in the right direction.