Written Question:

Mr. Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government with reference to the answers of 16 May 2008, Official Report, column 1801W, and to the hon. Member for Hertsmere, column 1800W, on social rented housing: foreigners, how many new (a) local authority social lettings and (b) registered social landlord lettings in England were made to foreign nationals from (i) EU member states and (ii) non-EU member states in (A) 2006-07 and (B) 2007-08. [297470]

Member Answering Question: The Rt Hon John Healey MP, Minister of State (Housing), Deparment for Communities and Local Government:

Answer: Information on the number of foreign national households receiving social housing is collected through the Continuous Recording of Letting form (CORE). Historically CORE has only collected information from registered social landlords. An increasing number of local authorities are now providing information through this process as well, but there are still some gaps in the data. Information on lettings to foreign nationals can only be supplied in terms of European economic area (EEA) countries and not EU member states. EEA countries also include Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

A question on nationality was first introduced to the form for the 2006-07 data collection period. For 2006-07, I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) on 16 May 2008, Official Report, column 1800W. For local authorities, a split between lettings to EEA and non-EEA foreign nationals is not available.

Estimates for 2007-08 are published on the Communities and Local Government website at:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/1228921.xls

These are based on an improved imputation method to adjust for missing local authority data.