Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent representations he has received on the (a) size and (b) condition of the homeless population.
Answered by Nigel Adams
The Department publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness
Homelessness charities regularly publish research and information on the homeless population. Ministers in the Department visit a variety of projects and regularly meet with key partners to discuss homelessness issues.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many homes have been purchased using Help To Buy in the borough of Bolton; and how many of those homes were sold with a lease.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The Department’s statistics on the Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme are published and available at the following link.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what information his Department holds on the amount of money spent by local authorities in the North West on sports and leisure in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
Over the course of this spending period the Government has made available over £200 billion of funding for local government, for councils to spend on locally determined priorities, including sports facilities.
Sport England works with a wide range of local authorities, providing expert advice and funding to sustain and increase the number of people playing sport regularly.
It invests in local authority facilities projects through its range of funding programmes to make sure that facilities are modern, accessible and in the right places to have the most impact.
Full details of the local government finance settlement are here:
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what support his Department provides to micro businesses to manage their business rates.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
Many micro businesses do not pay business rates, as they do not occupy rateable property or they benefit from Small Business Rates Relief (SBRR). SBRR was doubled to 100 per cent for businesses with rateable values under £12,000 from April 2017, meaning 600,000 small businesses now pay no business rates. Furthermore, all business, including micro businesses, will benefit from the Government’s decision to bring forward the switch of the annual indexation of business rates from RPI to CPI by two years to April 2018.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the level of home overcrowding in social rented sector.
Answered by Lord Sharma
Levels of overcrowding in the social rented sector are assessed using the Department's English Housing Survey and according to the 'Bedroom Standard'.
Overcrowding figures are published on Gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/658479/2015-16_Section_1_Households_Annex_Tables.xlsx (see AT 1.20)
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to promote the refurbishment of empty and vacant homes.
Answered by Lord Sharma
The number of empty homes in England is at its lowest since records began in 2004. In May 2010 over 300,000 homes in England had been standing empty for longer than 6 months. As of October 2016 the number of long-term empty properties had fallen to 200,145. Local authorities have powers and strong incentives to tackle empty homes.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what recent meetings he has had with (a) local authority leaders and (b) charity and voluntary sector representatives to discuss homelessness.
Answered by Marcus Jones
Ministers in my department visit a variety of projects, and meet with representatives of local authorities, voluntary and charity sector organisations, policy experts and other partners on a regular basis to discuss a range of issues including homelessness.
The Government publishes a list of all ministerial meetings with external bodies on departmental business on a quarterly basis. This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dclg-ministerial-data
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what recent representations he has received on the (a) size and (b) condition of the homeless population.
Answered by Marcus Jones
The department publishes regular statistics on rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics.
Homelessness charities regularly publish research and information on the homeless population. Ministers in the department visit a variety of projects and regularly meet with key partners to discuss homelessness issues.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what funding streams are available to communities that require remediation of contaminated land.
Answered by Marcus Jones
Funding for local authorities to fulfil their duties to identify and remediate contaminated land is provided through the local government finance settlement. The provisional settlement was announced on 15 December; this is the second year of a four year settlement where local authority core spending power is set to increase from £44.5 billion in 2015-16 to £44.7 billion in 2019-20.
Asked by: David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps the Government is taking to incentivise housebuilders to develop brownfield sites.
Answered by Lord Barwell
This Government has intensified its drive to increase the take-up of brownfield sites for development, especially new homes. National policy and guidance expect local authorities to prioritise brownfield land for development wherever practicable, and adopt Local Plan policies that support this effort. We want 90 per cent of suitable brownfield sites to have permissions for new homes in place by 2020. As well as accelerating disposal of public sector brownfield for new homes and widening the scope of permitted development to help bring thousands of redundant buildings into residential use, we recently launched our £3 billion Home Building Fund. This will provide loans for smaller building firms, custom builders, offsite construction and essential infrastructure, and help to make more land, much of it brownfield, available for new homes. An additional £1.2 billion will enable starter homes to be created on brownfield land. Housebuilders will be better informed about suitable sites by the new Brownfield Registers, and Permission in principle will give them certainty and greater confidence that their housing schemes can go ahead.