Mr. David Kelly:

The first thing I will say is that the allocations are provisional and are subject to review. Since the circular was issued, we have been talking to local authorities and getting feedback about whether the allocation is sufficient or looks a little high or low. As Ms Stapleton mentioned earlier, we will keep it under constant review. We want to ensure the full 1,500 acquisitions are delivered. The initial allocations were based on an analysis of the numbers of people who are homeless and who are on the housing waiting lists in each local authority area. Similar to the way social housing targets were issued, these are based on an assessment of need, but we also took the number of people who are homeless into account. However, we will be keeping those numbers under review and we will work throughout the year with local authorities on their experience of implementing the scheme.