Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how much (a) the Government and (b) local authorities in England spent on adult social care in each year since 2010 by region.
Answered by Marcus Jones
Local authorities spend on adult social care is financed through locally raised and retained income such as Council Tax and Business Rates and from centrally distributed revenue streams, such as the Better Care Fund, Revenue Support Grant and specific grants to local authorities and other organisations.
It is not possible to estimate all the elements of spend that go towards providing care from of each of these central government funding streams.
Information on adult social care spending by each and all local authorities in England is published on the Department’s website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing
DCLG has not produced statistics at regional level since 2012, as per Ministerial Statement:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/local-statistics
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many citizens of other EU countries work in his Department, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies.
Answered by Marcus Jones
My department has 36 staff who self declare as being from other EU countries.
My department's agencies have 14 staff from other EU countries, and the non-departmental public bodies have 12.
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he plans to take to reduce the number of homeless families with children living in temporary accommodation for longer than the six-week legal limit.
Answered by Marcus Jones
In December 2015 we launched a package of measures to combat homelessness. These measures include a £5 million fund for the 25 local authorities facing the greatest pressures in moving people more quickly out of temporary accommodation and into a settled home. This package also included a number of measures on homelessness prevention. Further details can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/radical-package-of-measures-announced-to-tackle-homelessness
The Department is committed to combating homelessness and from 2017/18 we will also be devolving the current funding for the temporary accommodation management fee, with an additional £10 million for those areas facing the greatest pressures.
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many children were housed in temporary accommodation for longer than the six-week legal limit in (a) the London Borough of Lambeth, (b) London and (c) England and Wales in each year since 2010-11.
Answered by Marcus Jones
We do not collect data on the numbers of children in temporary bed and breakfast style accommodation for longer than 6 weeks.
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of proposals to impose mandatory rent reductions on social landlords of one per cent each year for four years on housing co-operatives which have had a policy of maintaining low levels of rent.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
The Housing Benefit bill for England in the social sector now has risen by a quarter over the last 10 years, reaching £13.2 billion in 2014/15. Rising rents in the social housing sector are fuelling this increase in Housing Benefit, with average social rent increases of 55% over the last ten years, compared to 23% in the private rented sector. In the interests of fairness the Government plans to bring rent increases within the social sector back into line with the private rented sector by cutting rents for social housing tenants by 1% a year, for four years.
The Government recognises that rent reductions may have a bigger impact on some providers and some specific types of housing and has decided to put in place a one-year exception from the rent reduction for fully mutual co-operative housing, almshouses, community land trusts and supported housing while we consider the approach for the second year of the reductions onwards.
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what guidance his Department has issued on the applicability of Florrie's law, capping council housing repair bills, to works which were commissioned but not implemented before that law was introduced in August 2014.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Free advice and information about service charge issues, including the applicability of The Social Landlords Mandatory Reduction of Service Charges (England) Direction 2014 (known as ‘Florrie’s Law’), is available from the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE). This is a specialist body funded by my Department to provide initial advice and guidance on a wide range of residential leasehold issues.
These Directions do not apply to service charges for major works where a local authority has already been awarded Government funding to carry them out, regardless of whether the works have commenced before the law was introduced.
Asked by: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what policy evaluations have been carried out by external organisations for his Department and its agencies in each financial year since 2010-11; whether the output of those evaluations was published; which organisation carried out each such evaluation; and what the value of each contract to provide that evaluation was.
Answered by Mark Francois - Shadow Minister (Defence)
The attached table lists the policy evaluations carried out by DCLG since 2010-11.