Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what is the (a) total book value of the central Government estate in London and (b) rate payable on those properties.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
e-PIMS, the central database of properties and land, only holds asset values and rates payable in relation to specific programme requirements. We do not comprehensively record asset values as a matter of course and therefore are unable to provide the total book value. Rates payable information is only collected against individual properties for the benchmarked office estate. For the 149 benchmarked offices over 500m2 in the central civil estate in the London region, net rates totalling £121.3 million were payable in 2017/18.
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, to ask what steps his department has taken to ensure that central government Departments take account of social economic value under the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 in public procurement.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Central Government contracting authorities conducting major construction and infrastructure projects with a contract value exceeding £10 million are required to adopt the Growth Balanced Scorecard. The scorecard guides public procurers in balancing more straightforward matters such as cost, against more complex issues such as social and wider economic considerations when designing their procurement approaches.
Following on from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s speech to the Reform conference on 25 June 2018, the Cabinet Office is currently leading work with DCMS to implement a package of measures for the future of social value and procurement. This includes training for government commercial staff to ensure that all major procurements in central government explicitly evaluate and report on their social and economic value.
Further information will be published in due course.
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many polling stations were operational in elections for each relevant year since 2010.
Answered by Chloe Smith
This information is not held centrally by the Government. Local authority Returning Officers hold information on the polling stations used at each election which is passed to the Electoral Commission. The Commission then collates and publishes it in its electoral data report which can found on its website at https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/our-research/electoral-data/electoral-data-files-and-reports