Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the amount of UK Government funding allocated for regeneration in (a) steel communities, (b) coal communities and (c) coastal communities in each of the last six years.
Answered by Jake Berry
a) £192 million
b) £30 million
c) £145.65 million
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 21 January to Question 208793 on UK Shared Prosperity Fund, whether hon. Members were informed in advance of stakeholder events in their constituencies; and whether the Government plans to inform them of future events.
Answered by Jake Berry
My officials have been holding engagement events across the UK, including in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The stakeholder events were with external stakeholders from a breadth of sectors in order to aid policy development. No ministers or political representatives have been in attendance.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 15 January 2019 to Question 207170 on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, if he will list the (a) engagement events that took place and (b) the region and nation in which they took place.
Answered by Jake Berry
Over the past year we have held external stakeholder engagement events with representatives from a breadth of sectors. We spoke to businesses, public bodies, educational institutions, the voluntary and charity sector and rural partnership groups. Events have taken place in regions across the UK in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These stakeholder events form part of a larger programme of engagement, which includes our public consultation which we intend to publish shortly.
To date we have held 22 engagement events which are listed below:
Four events in Belfast
Bristol
Four events in Cardiff
Coventry
Derry Londonderry
Dundee
Two events in Edinburgh
Gateshead
Glasgow
Huddersfield
London
Loughborough
Norwich
Preston
Truro
We are also continuing to engage with stakeholders across all four nations including events in St Asaph, Edinburgh and Inverness in the next month.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 10 September 2018 to Question 170708 and the Written Statement of 24 July 2018 on Local Growth, HLWS898, if he will publish the proposed timeline for the consultation on the Shared Prosperity Fund.
Answered by Jake Berry
We intend to publish the public consultation on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund shortly. Over the past year the Government has conducted a series of engagement events across the UK, which have provided a crucial opportunity for interested parties to provide their views on the design of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 10 September 2018 to Question 170708 on UK Shared Prosperity Fund: Public Consultation, for what reason the consultation on the shared prosperity fund has been delayed.
Answered by Jake Berry
The Government recognises the importance of reassuring local areas on the future of local growth funding once we have left the European Union and providing clarity on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). Therefore we intend to publish the full consultation document shortly.
The Government has continued to make great progress on the design of the UKSPF over the past year and, ahead of the forthcoming consultation on the UKSPF, have held seventeen engagement events across the UK with over five hundred representatives from a breadth of sectors, in order to aid policy development.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 10 September 2018 to Question 170708 on UK Shared Prosperity Fund: Public Consultation, which Departments decided to postpone the consultation on the shared prosperity fund.
Answered by Jake Berry
The Government recognises the importance of reassuring local areas on the future of local growth funding once we have left the European Union and providing clarity on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). Therefore we intend to publish the full consultation document shortly.
The Government has continued to make great progress on the design of the UKSPF over the past year and, ahead of the forthcoming consultation on the UKSPF, have held seventeen engagement events across the UK with over five hundred representatives from a breadth of sectors, in order to aid policy development.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent estimate he has made of the number of homeless people sleeping in (a) tents and (b) cars.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
National street counts and intelligence driven estimates of people sleeping rough are conducted every year in autumn. The most recent data from the autumn 2017 annual street count and estimate returned a total figure of 4,751 rough sleepers in England.
Rough sleepers are defined as people sleeping, about to bed down, or actually bedded down in the open air (such as on the streets, in tents or in bus shelters) - as well as people in buildings or other places not designed for habitation. As such, homeless people sleeping in tents or cars are captured in the total. However, whilst they are incorporated in our data, there is not a separate breakdown for these demographics.
The official street count and estimate of the number of people sleeping rough on a single night in England, between 1 October 2018 and 30 November 2018, will be published on Thursday 31 January 2019.
This Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will list the last 10 occasions on which his Department has responded to a request for a comment from the media on homelessness; and what his Department's response was on each such occasion.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
On Thursday 13 and Friday 14 December my Department received 10 requests for comment from the media on homeless, which were responded to as follows.
The Department provided the following statement to requests from 6 media outlets, and one further media outlet requesting an interview or statement in response to a report from Crisis on the numbers of rough sleepers in Britain:
Heather Wheeler MP, Minister for Housing and Homelessness said: “It is simply unacceptable that anyone has to sleep on the streets which is why we have set out bold plans backed by £1.2 billion to tackle all forms of homelessness, including our £100 million Rough Sleeping Strategy. This is already making a difference through additional bed spaces and support workers and new legislation means people at risk are getting the help they need more quickly. But we know more needs to be done to end rough sleeping for good and are committed to work with partners like Crisis to do just that.”
Further, the Department provided the following statement to requests from 3 media outlets in response to the publication of experimental homelessness statistics:
Heather Wheeler MP, Minister for Housing & Homelessness said: “Everyone deserves a safe and secure place to live. It is good to see our Homeless Reduction Act making a real difference but we know we need to do more. “That is why we are investing £1.2 billion to tackle all forms of homelessness, we are putting £9 billion into our affordable housing programme and we are also empowering councils to borrow to build more council homes to ensure that more people have a home of their own.”
This information was compiled on Friday 14 December.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made the number of people made homeless in each of the last 18 months.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
My Department has published quarterly statistics on statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief activities in England. The latest published statistics are from January – March 2018. My Department also publishes annual counts and estimates of people sleeping rough.
The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether the Shared Prosperity Fund will fund (a) capital interventions and (b) revenue interventions.
Answered by Jake Berry
The composition of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will be decided at next year’s Spending Review. Decisions will be informed by a consultation, which will give all interested parties an opportunity to convey their views directly to Government.