All local authorities acquire land on an ongoing basis for a wide range of uses, including housing developments. My Department provides funding to local authorities also on an ongoing basis where they use their land for social housing developments.
Specific allocations of funding are not made to local authorities for land, rather each local authority makes its own decisions regarding land acquisition in line with their needs and my Department provides full funding in respect of the all-in capital costs - including land costs and construction costs - when land is used for the construction of new social housing.
To incentivise and support local authorities to further develop their landbanks, A new initiative has been confirmed for 2021 to support land acquisition where it's for new social housing developments. The focus with this initiative is land that is development-ready for housing, is appropriately zoned, which faces no other known obstacles to its development and where the local authority can work to a delivery programme to develop social housing as soon as possible on the site. In such cases, funding for the land will be provided by my Department when a local authority presents a social housing development proposal for the site.
On the back of this initiative, local authorities are seeking suitable sites that can be acquired and funding will be provided by my Department as these are brought forward. The uptake under this initiative will depend on the need for additional land which will vary across the local authorities. The amount of social housing to be delivered on land acquired under this initiative will depend on the extent of land acquired and the density of housing that can be delivered in line with planning approvals. I hope that public representatives will support local authorities to utilise this initiative to acquire new sites and will then support new social housing delivery on such sites through the planning process.
