Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of section 21 notices on the housing supply of local authorities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Tenancies provided directly by Local Authorities are governed by the Housing Act 1985, and Local Authorities are therefore unable to evict tenants using Section 21.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department has made an equality impact assessment of tenants who have been evicted under section 21 notices.
Answered by Lee Rowley
As private landlords are not required to record when they serve a notice of possession, it is not possible to break down the volume of notices served by protected characteristics.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, for what reason there has been a delay in abolishing Section 21 notices and no fault evictions.
Answered by Lee Rowley
The White Paper “A Fairer Private Rented Sector” , published in June 2022, provides further information on the most recent Government announcements in this policy area. We will announce next steps in due course.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many of his Department's ministers have been exempted from quarantine in a hotel after returning to the UK from a covid-19 red list country to which they have travelled for the purposes of conducting official business.
Answered by Eddie Hughes
No Minister from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has travelled to a country while the country was on the Covid-19 red list for the purpose of conducting official business.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps the Government is taking to provide support to district councils in two-tier local authority areas that are facing reductions in income and increases in expenditure as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Simon Clarke
Allocations of the additional £1.6 billion support for councils to respond to coronavirus were announced on Tuesday 28 April. This is an unprecedented package of support which responds to the range of pressures councils have told us they are facing and takes the total amount provided to local councils to over £3.2 billion. Across both waves of funding, almost 70 per cent of district councils will receive £1 million or more in support, whilst 90 per cent of the funding will go to social care authorities.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the feasibility of temporarily removing statutory constraints on local government finance to help local authorities manage the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on their finances.
Answered by Simon Clarke
Government does not currently intend to temporarily remove any of the statutory framework that governs local government finance. However, changes have been made to the statutory audit framework to delay the requirement to prepare and approve draft accounts by the end of May. Instead, they must be approved by 31 August 2020 at the latest or may be approved earlier, wherever possible.
In addition, Government has announced £3.2 billion un-ringfenced funding to support councils to deliver essential front line services – this is an unprecedented sum of money and demonstrates the Government's commitment to support the sector. In addition, we have agreed to defer £2.6 billion in business rates payments, and have brought forward £850 million in social care grants, to ease immediate pressures on local authority cash flow.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with local authorities on the delivery of children’s services.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
The Secretary of State and the Minister for Local Government regularly hear from Councils across the country to discuss the delivery of services, including Children’s Social Care.
The Department leads on the national Troubled Families Programme, which aims to find better ways of working with complex families with multiple high-cost problems. Ministers regularly visit participating authorities and hear from the families and children who are supported by the Programme, in which we have committed £920 million from 2015-2020.