To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many and what proportion of eligible people have participated in key worker affordable housing schemes in each year since 2001, broken down by (a) region and (b) homes that are in (i) rural and (ii) non-rural areas; and if she will make a statement.

In recent years the Government have funded a number of schemes to offer specific housing assistance to key workers in areas experiencing problems of recruitment and retention difficulties: from April 2001 to March 2006, over 23,000 homes for key workers have been provided through the starter home initiative and key worker living programmes. These include both new homes and provision of equity loans to support purchase of homes on the open market. SHI ran from 2001-04 and was replaced by KWL in April 2004. KWL only operates in the south- east, London and the east of England.

We do not have data on how many key workers might be eligible for the programme so we do not know what proportion of eligible people have participated. The numbers of key workers that received help from key worker housing initiatives in each year since 2001 are provided in the following tables. These tables do not include second key workers helped within a household.

We do not collect data on the numbers of homes purchased in rural areas with the assistance of an equity loan. However, we do know the numbers of key workers helped through our new build schemes in rural areas. These are given in the following table. These numbers are small because demand for key worker housing tends to be in urban areas where the majority of employer organisations are located. However, from April 2006 regional housing boards have been able to prioritise groups for assistance under our other low cost home ownership schemes.