Anna Dixon

The Government is investing £1.14 billion over 30 years (£38 million annually) towards West Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s local economic priorities, including business support. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund also provides £83 million for West Yorkshire, including support for rural businesses in Shipley.

For small businesses across the country, we will deliver on commitments to boost exports, improve access to finance, stamp out late payment practices and open up competition for public procurement contracts. The department also provides support through Help to Grow Management, the Business Support Service and network of Growth Hubs – including the West Yorkshire Business Support Service.

The Government recently announced the re-establishment of the Solar Taskforce and publication of the Solar Roadmap will follow shortly, setting out recommendations on how we and industry will work together to achieve our ambition to radically increase deployment by 2030. Alongside that, Government recently concluded its latest Contracts for Difference round, where a record 3.3GW of solar capacity was secured.

The Government is committed to the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP). The SSEP will support a more actively planned approach to energy infrastructure across England, Scotland and Wales, across land and sea. The Secretary of State and Head of Mission Control also wrote to the ESO on 23rd August to formally commission advice regarding the key requirements for the Government to meet its clean power commitment by 2030.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66cda5c1e39a8536eac0532e/sos-chris-stark-letter-clean-power-2030.pdf

It is the Government’s priority to build support for developments by ensuring communities directly benefit. We are reviewing how to most effectively deliver community benefits for communities living near new energy infrastructure.

This government is committed to improving mental health and wellbeing support for all children and young people. This is critical to breaking down barriers to opportunity and learning.

The right support should be available to every young person that needs it, which is why this government will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school. We will also be putting in place new Young Futures hubs, including access to mental health support workers, and will recruit an additional 8,500 new mental health staff to treat children and adults.

Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) currently cover 44% of children and young people in schools and colleges across England. These MHSTs have three core functions: i) to deliver evidence-based early interventions for emerging and actual mental health issues, 1-1 and in groups, ii) to support a school or college’s mental health lead to embed an effective approach to promote and support mental health and wellbeing, and iii) to advise school and college staff, and liaise with external specialist services, to help pupils and learners to get the right timely support and stay in education.

Data specifically on how many schools and colleges in Shipley constituency work with an MHSTs is not currently available. As of April 2024, 28% of pupils and learners in Bradford local authority are in schools and colleges that work with an MHST, compared to 44% nationally: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision.

A resource hub for mental health leads and a targeted mental wellbeing support toolkit are available on the Mentally Healthy Schools platform. Data is available at a local authority level on the schools and colleges that have taken up the offer of the department’s funded mental health lead training grant. By the end of March 2024, 73% of schools and colleges in Bradford local authority had claimed a senior mental health leads training grant, compared to 74% nationally.

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission are jointly responsible for inspecting local area arrangements for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).

Bradford last received an area SEND inspection in March 2022, during which inspectors identified five areas of significant weakness:

• Poor communication between stakeholders across education, health and care (EHC).
• The variable quality of EHC plans, including plans which do not fully describe the provision that children and young people with SEND need.
• The inconsistent delivery of the 0 to 19 health visiting, school nursing and specialist nursing services.
• Children and young people wait too long for assessments, treatment and diagnosis. There is insufficient support for children and young people with SEND who are waiting for provision, services, diagnosis or equipment.
• EHC services do not work together well. The arrangements for joint commissioning are underdeveloped.

The local area was required to produce a written statement of action to explain, to Ofsted and the department, how they would address these areas of weakness.

Following the inspection outcome, the department has worked closely with its partners in NHS England to monitor, support and challenge the local area partnership in making the necessary improvements. The City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council is also receiving additional support from a specialist SEND advisor, and the department will continue to work with the Council and relevant stakeholders to support them in improving SEND services and provision in Bradford.

High needs funding is increasing to over £10.5 billion for the 2024/25 financial year. Of this, through their dedicated schools grant for the 2024/25 financial year, Bradford is receiving a high needs funding allocation of £122.3 million. This funding will continue to help with the costs of supporting children and young people with SEND.

Reforming children’s social care is critical to deliver the government’s Opportunity Mission, to ensure that no child or young person’s background limits their ambition or life chances.

The department recognises that children in care and care leavers have poorer outcomes than their peers across all aspects of their lives, and wants all those who are in care or leaving care to have stable homes, access to health services, support to build lifelong loving relationships, and help to engage in education, employment and training.

In the King’s Speech, the government committed to introduce a Children’s Wellbeing Bill, which will allow the government to take forward the legislative changes needed to improve the children’s social care system for children in care and care leavers, including through a clearer focus on improving the support provided by government departments and relevant public bodies.

Protecting communities around the country from flooding and coastal erosion is one of the new Secretary of State’s five core priorities.

This Government will improve resilience and preparation across central government, local authorities, local communities and emergency services to better protect communities across the UK. We will launch a new Flood Resilience Taskforce to turbocharge the delivery of new flood defences, drainage systems and natural flood management schemes.

Bradford Council and the Environment Agency have identified 47 properties at several locations in the Shipley constituency at high risk of flooding from the River Aire. Assessments undertaken confirm neither upstream flood storage, walls nor embankments provide viable solutions for the River Aire in the Shipley constituency. Bradford Council is working with these properties to determine the suitability and effectiveness of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) for their property. PFR measures in 39 properties will be installed over the autumn and winter. Bradford Council will continue to engage with the remaining properties.

The Government has taken immediate and substantial action to address water companies who are not performing for the environment or their customers. In July, we announced swift action to begin resetting the water sector, including ringfencing vital funding for infrastructure investment and placing customers and the environment at the heart of water company objectives.

In September, Government introduced the Water (Special Measures) Bill to parliament to give regulators new powers to take tougher and faster action to crack down on water companies damaging the environment and failing their customers. These are the first critical steps in enabling a long-term and transformative reset of the entire water sector.

I would also refer the hon. Member to the Written Statement made by the Secretary of State on 18 July, HCWS3.

The safety of our roads is an absolute priority for this Government and that is why the Department is committed to delivering a new Road Safety Strategy, the first in over a decade. The Department will set out next steps on this in due course.

The Government’s ambition is to make sure that everyone who needs dental treatment can access a dentist, including in the Shipley constituency. We will tackle the immediate dentistry crisis with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments, and to recruit new dentists to areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of National Health Service dentists.

Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local populations, and for determining the priorities for investment in their area.

The new hospital scheme for Airedale General Hospital has received £6.6 million of funding up to the end of 2023/24. The final funding envelope for the new hospital is subject to the approval of a Full Business Case, as is usual for large infrastructure projects.

We must reset the New Hospital Programme to put it on a sustainable footing, however we are clear that replacing hospitals built wholly or mostly with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, including Airedale General Hospital, are the priority.

We are undertaking a full review of the programme to provide a thorough, costed, and realistic timeline for delivery and to ensure we can replace the crumbling hospital estate in England. The review will be completed this autumn, and once concluded, Parliament will be updated on the next steps for the programme.

The new hospital scheme for Airedale General Hospital has received £6.6 million of funding up to the end of 2023/24. The final funding envelope for the new hospital is subject to the approval of a Full Business Case, as is usual for large infrastructure projects.

We must reset the New Hospital Programme to put it on a sustainable footing, however we are clear that replacing hospitals built wholly or mostly with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, including Airedale General Hospital, are the priority.

We are undertaking a full review of the programme to provide a thorough, costed, and realistic timeline for delivery and to ensure we can replace the crumbling hospital estate in England. The review will be completed this autumn, and once concluded, Parliament will be updated on the next steps for the programme.

The Government understands the importance of face-to-face banking to communities and high streets, and is committed to championing sufficient access for all as a priority.

This is why the Government is working closely with industry to ensure that at least 350 banking hubs are delivered across the UK, which will provide individuals and businesses up and down the country with critical cash and banking services.

Over 60 banking hubs are already open and Cash Access UK, who oversee banking hub rollout, expect 100 hubs to be open by the end of the year.

Tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for this Government, and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission

​We will put thousands of neighbourhood police and community support officers back into local communities, so that residents have somewhere to turn to when things go wrong.

​We will crack down on those causing havoc on our high streets and in city centres by introducing tougher powers via a Crime and Policing Bill, including a new Respect Order to tackle repeat offending.

There is a statutory regime for dealing with a range of nuisances including noise. Local authority environmental health departments are the main enforcers of the noise nuisance regime. It is for individual local authorities to determine the detailed arrangements of the services they provide taking into account their assessment of local needs and circumstances.

Probation staff do an extraordinary job in extremely challenging circumstances.

The eight weeks since the Lord Chancellor’s announcement of prisoner release under SDS40 has given the Probation Service more time to prepare than a release on the previous Government’s End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme afforded. We have also committed to recruiting 1000 new probation officers by March 2025.

Once released, offenders will be subject to the same set of strict licence conditions. These can include electronic monitoring, alcohol tags and exclusion zones. Should offenders breach these conditions they face being immediately recalled to prison.

Since July 2024, the Probation Service has implemented a set of measures designed to help alleviate workload pressures in response to the impact of prison capacity. This involves prioritising early engagement at the point where offenders are most likely to breach the requirements of their licence or community sentence. In turn that ensures that staff can maximise supervision of the most serious offenders.