Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answers of 9 January 2017 to Question 58515 and of 18 January 2017 to Question 59298, what plans he has to equalise the payment ratio of new homes bonuses in two-tier local authority areas to help fund social care; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
The Government has reformed the New Homes Bonus, and the distribution of funding specifically for adult social care was set out in the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement on 15 December 2016.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 9 January 2017 to Question 58515, what plans he has to fund social care through new homes bonuses in two tier local authority areas; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
Reforms to the New Homes Bonus have identified savings of £240m which will be made available for adult social care by means of a new, one-off, Adult Social Care Support Grant. This grant will be distributed to all social care authorities in accordance with the social care relative needs formula.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to fund social care through new homes bonuses; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
Local authorities choose how much to spend on social care in their area, drawing on income from local taxes and national grants. On 15 December, we announced that we will provide an additional £240 million to fund adult social care through the Adult Social Care Support Grant in 2017-18, funded by reforms to the New Homes Bonus. This funding will be used to support immediate pressures being experienced by authorities delivering adult social care and will be distributed as a one off grant allocated according to the adult social care Relative Needs Formula. This is in addition to measures to direct funding to social care announced at the 2015 Spending Review, including the improved Better Care Fund grant, which were partly funded from reforms to the New Homes Bonus.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment has he made of the effect of high car parking charges on the viability of town centre economies; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Andrew Percy
The department does not centrally collect data on high parking charges. Local authorities are responsible for setting local parking charges taking account of local circumstances.
We want local authorities to adopt policies that support local town centres, and have recently consulted on "Strengthening Local Government Transparency". The consultation included a proposal to increase the amount of information local authorities would need to publish on parking thereby helping local communities to better understand what revenues were being raised from parking.
The intention of this proposed change would be to encourage a better local dialogue between communities and the local authorities that represent them about what appropriate parking charge levels should be.
We are currently analysing responses to the consultation and will publish our response in due course.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the appropriateness of the use by Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership of the £15 million of Growth Deal funds allocated for the purposes of land acquisition.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s (LEP) round 1 growth deal included a £16 million Government commitment to invest in the A1(M) transport corridor supporting the acceleration of housing delivery across this growth area. Government has put clear assurance systems in place to ensure that the LEP operates transparently and we will continue to work with them to ensure their systems offer value for money, and that public resources have been spent in a reasonable and considered manner.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 10 February 2016 to Questions 26101 and 29935, if he will publish the data referred to in the latter Answer as the basis for the statement that even if all authorities increase council tax by the maximum under the referendum principles, it will be lower in 2019-20 in real terms compared to 2010.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
The data underlying the statement is:
a) the published DCLG council tax levels to 2015-16 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/council-tax-levels-set-by-local-authorities-in-england-2015-to-2016 (table 9, and equivalent for earlier years) and
b) the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast of the Consumer Price Index at: http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/download/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-supplementary-economy-tables-november-2015/ (table 1.7).
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 10 February 2016 to Question 26101, what the evidential basis is for the statement that even if all authorities increase by the maximum under the referendum principles, council tax will be lower in 2019-20 in real terms compared to 2010.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
The basis for this statement is calculating what the maximum that the England average council tax bills would be if all local authorities chose to increase by the maximum under the 2016-17 referendum principles. Plus what the increases would be if the same referendum principles applied for the years up to 2019-20. The maximum that the average bill could be is adjusted to 2010-11 prices using the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast of the Consumer Price Index.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 3 March 2016 to Question 28942, what estimate he has made of the potential cost to people who pay council tax of that tax in (a) England and (b) each region of England in (i) 2016-17 and (ii) 2017-18.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
Council tax decisions are a matter for individual local authorities and we have not made estimates of council tax in individual areas for future years.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 21 January 2016 to Question 28259, what estimate he has made of the potential cost to people who pay council tax of that tax in (a) Stevenage, (b) Hertfordshire and (c) England in (i) 2016-17 and (ii) 2017-18.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
Council tax decisions are a matter for individual local authorities and we have not made estimates of council tax in individual areas for future years.
Asked by: Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 21 January 2016 to Question 23515, what estimate he has made of the total cost to people who pay council tax of that tax in (a) Stevenage, (b) Hertfordshire and (c) England in (i) 2014-15 and (ii) 2015-16.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
This information is available on the Government website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-council-tax
The table shows that the average levels of Band D council tax (including parish precepts) in those years are:
| 2014-15 | 2015-16 |
England | £1,468 | £1,484 |
Hertfordshire1 | £1,380 - £1,516 | £1,402 - £1,539 |
Stevenage | £1,455 | £1,477 |
1: Range from lowest (Broxbourne) to highest (Watford)