Buried in the latest monthly public finance figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is a paragraph concerning the reclassification of Welsh registered social landlords (RSLs) as from June 13 2018. In a nutshell, the ONS has concluded that the RSLs are ‘private market producers’ and as a result have been reclassified to the ‘private non-financial corporations sub-sector’.

What this actually means is that their debt has now been transferred out of the public sector with the happy consequence (for the chancellor) of reducing total public sector debt by £2.7bn at the end of June 2018 and £200m a year from now on. The ONS is now looking at applying the same rules to RSLs in Scotland and Northern Ireland.