Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support the Government provides to help communities adapt to the challenges caused by coastal erosion; and whether her Department has plans to increase that support.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To help communities adapt to the challenges of coastal erosion, the Government has made a record investment of £5.2 billion which includes defences for the coast where it is sustainable and affordable to defend the coastline. Around one in six of the projects in the £5.2 billion 2021-27 programme aims to better protect coastal communities.
In addition to the £5.2 billion flood and coastal defence programme, the Government is investing £200 million in the Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme (FCRIP) to support local places including coastal communities. This includes the £36 million coastal transition accelerators programme which will support communities in areas at significant risk of coastal erosion to transition and adapt to a changing climate.
The coastal transition accelerator programme will be a catalyst for strategic long-term planning, and test out innovative practical actions to support the coastal communities at risk from coastal erosion. East Riding of Yorkshire and North Norfolk have been identified as the areas to lead off the programme, as they have proportionally the highest number of properties at risk from coastal erosion in England and are facing the greatest challenges from erosion and loss of coastline. Their experience and their learning will be shared nationally.
East Suffolk Council is leading a project as part of the Government’s FCRIP. This £8 million Resilient Coasts Project will work with affected coastal communities in four core locations across the East Suffolk and Great Yarmouth frontage. This will enable the people, economies and environment of the Great Yarmouth and Suffolk coastal frontages to live and work with a climate resilient coast.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will grant local authorities additional powers to compel landowners to contribute to coastal protection schemes.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Local authorities have a wide range of powers under the Coastal Protection Act (1949) to carry out their role as coastal protection authorities and as coastal erosion risk management authorities, including powers to raise levies on those with an interest in land that will benefit from any coastal protection works. The Act also makes the Environment Agency a relevant authority for the coast protection along with coastal protection authorities. This means the Environment Agency has discretionary powers to direct an owner or occupier of land to undertake coast protection works where they have a historical obligation to maintain defences.
The Rt Hon Member's continued support to the Great Yarmouth Borough Council and Coast Parentship East helps to fully engage the local community and relevant landowners, as they take decisions and actions along this part of our coast.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will review the methodology used by the Government to assess the economic impact of coastal erosion.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To assess the economic impact of coastal erosion, Defra complies with the methodology used by government which is set out in the green book and is in line with the most advanced knowledge in the field. We are committed to maintain this high standard as new data becomes available and we are building evidence about climate change and sea level rise. Our methodology for appraising coastal erosion projects, for grant in aid, already includes benefits that come from extending the life of properties or any other asset at risk of being lost to the sea because of coastal erosion.
The Government is investing £5.2 billion over six years in flood and coastal erosion schemes to better protect communities across England. Around 1in 6 of the projects in the £5.2bn 2021-27 programme aim to better protect coastal communities.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential threat to the Norfolk Broads eco-system through salt water ingress through (a) rivers and (b) encroachment from the coastline.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In order to protect fish stocks, the Environment Agency continuously monitors saline levels on the River Bure and River Yare. The Agency also monitors weather and tidal forecasts to help prepare for any potential incidents as a result of saline incursion.
To help get better understanding and predict how far and how much saltwater currently extends into the Broadland rivers now and in future, the Broadland Futures Initiative (BFI) a partnership for future flood risk management in the Broadland area, are working with Environment Agency to develop a statistical model that relates the degree of incursion to the main factors which cause it. This statistical model will be based on the long record of salinity monitoring data collected by the Environment Agency together with other organisations and groups. With ongoing monitoring and data collection, the ability to predict will further improve and the Environment Agency also continue to explore ways to reduce the impact of these natural events.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the average wait time is for an application to change the land registry to be fully processed as of 10 January 2023.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
HM Land Registry’s latest processing times are published on GOV.UK here.
Over 90% of information requests are delivered instantly via digital services, with the remainder within three days. The average waiting time for all other applications was two weeks in December, although more complex applications can take longer.
Customers can request fast-tracking at no extra cost if an application becomes urgent. HMLR processes over 1000 of these every day, with 95% completed within 10 working days.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of his Department's policies on protecting residents from unscrupulous management companies; and whether he plans to take further steps to protect residents.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
I refer my Rt. Hon. Friend to the answer I gave to Question UIN 114795 on 13 January 2023.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has made an assessment of the impact of the cost of energy on the laundry sector as a (a) standalone industry and (b) part of the supply chain within the hospitality industry.
Answered by Graham Stuart
No such assessment has been made. However, the Government remains committed to supporting business with the rise in energy costs through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme which will provide a price reduction to all eligible businesses and other non-domestic customers. The price reduction will run from October 2022 until March 2023.
From April 2023 the Energy Bills Discount Scheme will support UK businesses, charities and public sector with energy bills. The Scheme will provide a discount on high energy costs. Businesses in sectors with particularly high levels of energy use and trade intensity will receive a higher level of support.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on identifying non-hotel accommodation for Asylum seekers; and if she will provide a timetable for the decommissioning of hotel accommodation.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The enduring solution to this challenge is to stop the illegal, dangerous and unnecessary small boat crossings that are overwhelming our asylum system. Not only is every crossing attempt a potential tragedy, as we have seen far too often, but the people arriving via these small boats have travelled through, and have left, safe countries with fully functioning asylum systems to reach the UK.
We are taking a range of steps to reduce our dependency on hotels to support those already in the asylum system. All local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales became an asylum dispersal area by default in April 2022. This is increasing the number of suitable properties that can be procured for destitute asylum seekers across the UK, ensuring a fair spread across the country and reducing our reliance on hotels. We also intend to bring forward a range of alternative sites, such as disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites, to add thousands of places at half the cost of hotels.
The Home Office is tackling the asylum legacy caseload so that people can exit the system, either by returning to their home country, or granting them asylum so they can begin to make a contribution to the UK. The Home Office has already increased the number of its asylum caseworkers from 597 in 2019/20 to more than 1,000 today, and we are on course to add a further 500 caseworkers by March 2023. We are also improving the productivity of these decision-makers by re-engineering the caseworking process from top to bottom. This includes conducting more focused interviews and streamlining and digitising the caseworking process.
These reforms will speed up decision making, reduce the number of asylum seekers who are awaiting a decision and ease the pressure on local authorities by reducing our dependency on hotels and the number of asylum seekers accommodated in them.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the average payment time is for each Governmental department for invoices submitted by SMEs as of 10 January 2023.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government does not currently require departments to publish the average time taken to pay invoices to SMEs. However, departments do publish information on the overall percentage of invoices paid within 5 to 30 days. As of the end of the last financial year, 13 out of 16 departments were paying over 85% of all invoices within 5 days, and 14 of 16 departments were paying in excess of 95% of their invoices within 30 days.
The Procurement Bill currently progressing through the Commons contains a Clause (68) that will require all contracting authorities to publish specified information relating to invoice payments. It is intended that the average time taken to pay an invoice will be one of those specified pieces of information.
Asked by: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of children who are being home educated in (a) Great Yarmouth constituency, (b) Norfolk and (c) England.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department has recently completed the collection of data on the number of children who are electively home educated. This data is being prepared for publication in due course.
Data has been collected at Local Authority level and so data relating to individual constituencies is not held.