Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department has taken in response to its consultation on preserving the free use of public parks.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
On 14 December 2018 the Government published its response to the consultation stating that we would not impose regulations on local authorities preventing them from charging for free to use events held in public parks. However, we remain committed to the underlying principle that the use of public parks by the public for reasonable everyday use is, and should remain, free.
The Government is currently working together with the Local Government Association to identify models of good practice and collaborative working between local authorities and local groups that can be shared widely to make the best use of parks for the whole community.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what schemes that tackle homelessness in the Midlands receive government funding.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
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.
Local authorities in the Midlands are receiving funding from the following government programmes:
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding had been allocated to Nottinghamshire from the Housing Infrastructure Fund.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The South of Clifton Housing Infrastructure Scheme in Rushcliffe, for which the local authority requested £10 million of Marginal Viability Funding, has completed funding clarification. My Department will be notifying the local authority of the outcome very shortly. Nottinghamshire is also one of the 45 areas across England with whom we are working to co-develop Forward Funding projects with up to £4.6 billion of funding available to unlock a potential 450,000 homes in areas where housing need is greatest. For Forward Funding schemes in co-development, there is no guarantee of funding. It is still a competitive process, and following co-development, these areas will be required to submit business cases prior to final funding decisions being made.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding his Department allocated from the early intervention grant to projects in Nottinghamshire in the last 12 months for which information is available.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
In 2013-14 MHCLG introduced the business rates retention scheme, under which local authorities retained a proportion of the business rates that they collect. A number of specific grants from other Government Departments were transferred into the business rates retention scheme at this time, including the Department for Education’s Early Intervention Grant.
In order to maintain the visibility of a number of named, non ring-fenced, elements of funding within the local government finance settlement, the Government currently publishes a Core Spending Power visible lines table (link below). The Early Intervention Grant is one of the visible lines set out in this table. To reflect the fact that local government is transitioning away from a world where councils are dependent on central government grants and towards greater self-sufficiency, these visible lines are shown at a national and local level within local authority Core Spending Power.
Link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/core-spending-power-visible-lines-of-funding-2018-to-2019
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 since it came into force.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The Homelessness Reduction Act, the most ambitious reform to homelessness legislation in decades, came into effect on 3 April 2018, to ensure more people get the support they need before they face a homelessness crisis. It is currently too early to fully understand the effectiveness of the Act.
We intend to publish the first homelessness statistics since the Act came into force from our new case-level information system, in December 2018, as experimental statistics. We have also committed to reviewing the implementation of the Act, including its resourcing and how it is working in practice, within two years. We will shortly publish terms of reference for this review.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding his Department has allocated from the Youth Opportunities Fund to projects in Nottinghamshire in each of the last five years.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
The Youth Opportunity Fund was a Department for Education (DfE) programme until 2011, when it was one of several funding streams for children, young people and families to be replaced by the Early Intervention Grant. Responsibility for youth services transferred from DfE to the Office of Civil Society (OCS) in 2013. OCS is now a division of the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Affordable Homes Programme in the East Midlands.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Department does not publish Affordable Homes Programme allocations data by the financial year. Initial programme allocations to January 2017, including by Homes England operating area, can be found here:
The Department does not publish funding allocation information on a local authority level basis.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
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 estimate of the number of businesses which have benefited from small business rate relief in (a) Mansfield, (b) Nottinghamshire and (c) the East Midlands in each of the last five years.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
The number of properties, which the VOA terms 'hereditaments' in the Mansfield District Council area who have benefitted from small business rate relief as at the 31 December in each of the last 5 years can be found at the following links. The data are as reported by the local authority on their NNDR1 return. Comparisons between 2015 and 2016 should not be made as the qualifying thresholds for the relief changed.
31 December 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/684809/1819_NNDR1_Supplementary_table_web.xlsx
31 December 2016: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/625980/1718_NNDR1_Supplementary_table.xlsx
31 December 2015: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/574277/NNDR1_Supplementary_tables_web.xlsx
31 December 2014: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/418000/Final_Published_Supplementary_tables_1516_v2.xlsx
31 December 2013: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/381055/Supplementary_tables_1415.xlsx
Figures are not published for Nottinghamshire and East Midlands, but data for authorities in these areas are published in these supplementary tables.