Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has plans to introduce a minimum level of access to outside space, be it communal gardens or private, as a condition of granting planning permission to medium and large-scale developments.
Answered by Dominic Raab
The Government believes that good design is fundamental to creating healthy, safe, inclusive, accessible and attractive places, where people genuinely want to live, and which can cater for all members of the community. In the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) the Government makes clear its commitment to high quality and inclusive design. The NPPF also encourages the use of design tools and processes which assess and improve the design of new development, including Building for Life 12 and design review
Following proposals consulted on in the Housing White Paper, the revised NPPF will be published for consultation before Easter, and this will incorporate strengthened policies on design.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many people in north Cornwall have participated in the right-to-buy scheme.
Answered by Dominic Raab
Figures for the number of Right to Buy Sales by local authority are available in live table 691 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-social-housing-sales
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many representations he has received from Cornish business groups prior to the announcement of the local government finance settlement.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
Prior to the provisional settlement, my Department held a technical consultation in September 2017 on the planned approach to the 2018-19 local government finance settlement. We received a total of 330 representations of which none were from Cornish business groups.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
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 number of homeless people in Cornwall; and what assessment he has made of the trend in the level of homelessness in that area in the past five years.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief. These are published at a local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics.
We are supporting 48 projects through our £20 million Rough Sleeping Grant, with £470,000 awarded to Cornwall for services to work in partnership and prevent people from sleeping rough through identifying those at risk as well as assisting people into emergency accommodation.
The Government remains committed to combating homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why we are aiming to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it altogether by 2027. To achieve this, we have set up a Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce that will focus on prevention and affordable housing.
We also supported the Homelessness Reduction Act which commences in April 2018. The Act significantly reforms England’s homelessness legislation, ensuring that more people get the help they need earlier to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending the National Planning Policy Framework to stipulate that buildings with public access have changing places in disabled toilets.
Answered by Dominic Raab
The National Planning Policy Framework is supportive of good and inclusive design. This is important, given the government's commitment to building successful and attractive communities. The Framework defines inclusive design as ‘designing the built environment, including buildings and their surrounding spaces, to ensure that they can be accessed and used by everyone’.
Specific requirements relating to access to and use of new buildings, including buildings to which the public has access, are set out in Part M of Schedule 1 of the Building Regulations. Statutory guidance, which supports these requirements, set out in Approved Document M, Volume 2 – buildings other than dwellings, states that toilet accommodation needs to be suitable, not only for disabled people, but for all people who use the building.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has commissioned research into the effectiveness of the guidance which supports the Building Regulations’ requirements relating to access to and use of non-domestic buildings. We will be taking the research into account in considering whether any changes need to be made to the guidance on the provision of toilet facilities for people with disabilities.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent progress has been made on the creation of the Shared Prosperity Fund for Cornwall.
Answered by Jake Berry
My Department continues to develop the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which aims to improve productivity and reduce economic inequalities across the country. As announced in the Industrial Strategy, we will consult widely on the design of the new Fund later in the year.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when he plans announce the funding allocations for the Community Housing Fund.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
On 27 November 2017, I announced that the programme to deliver the Community Housing Fund will be launched in January 2018 and will be delivered by Homes England (currently the Homes and Communities Agency). Any appropriate organisation – including appropriately constituted community groups, local authorities and registered providers of affordable housing – will be invited to submit applications for capital and revenue grant funding to support community-led housing projects anywhere in England. The first allocations from the Fund in 2018 are expected to be made around Easter.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to promote the construction of affordable housing in Cornwall.
Answered by Alok Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
Affordable housing is a Government priority. That’s why we are:
Providing rent certainty to 2025 to support stable investment environment.
Supporting councils with an extra £1 billion of borrowing to build more homes where demand is greatest.
Supporting all developers by continuing to reform the planning system to ensure that we plan for and build enough of the right homes in the right places.
The Homes and Communities Agency has allocated around £31 million funding from the Affordable Homes Programme 2016-21 in Cornwall, and last year we saw a 60 per cent increase in the number of affordable housing starts and an 18 per cent increase in completions.
Asked by: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department plans to take to (a) help expedite implementation of neighbourhood plans and (b) prevent delays resulting from judicial review of such plans.
Answered by Lord Barwell
We are committed to supporting communities throughout the process and encouraging more communities to join them. Reforms in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 will help to speed up and simplify the neighbourhood planning process. We are looking to introduce a new package of measures that would further strengthen the neighbourhood planning process when Parliamentary time allows over the course of the second session.
The neighbourhood planning legislation means that most challenges to neighbourhood planning decisions need to be brought within six weeks of the decision that is being challenged, rather than three months for most other judicial review proceedings, with no discretion to extend the time limit. This helps ensure that any associated delays are minimal. The establishment of the Planning Court in 2014 also means that it is more likely that these cases will be heard quickly by a specialist planning judge.