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Written Question
Rented Housing: Older People
Tuesday 26th March 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to help individuals aged over 65 living in rented accommodation.

Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

The Renters (Reform) Bill is currently making its way through Parliament. It will deliver the Government’s commitment to a fairer private rented sector in England, improving the system for responsible tenants and good faith landlords.


Written Question
Levelling Up Fund: Strangford
Thursday 21st March 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how much and what proportion of levelling up funding allocated to Northern Ireland has been for projects within Strangford constituency.

Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

The UK Government is investing over £15 billion in a suite of complementary Levelling Up projects to help grow the economy, create jobs, improve transport, provide skills training and support local businesses.

Overall, Northern Ireland has received around £435 million in Levelling Up funding and Strangford constituency has benefited from this funding, through a range of funds. In addition, a number of DLUHC funds are being made available to the Northern Ireland Executive as part of the financial package, further increasing the spending power available to the Executive and allowing it to invest against its own priorities. The full list of the UK Government funds which are being made available to the Executive is at gov.uk.

Strangford constituency benefits from a share of UKSPF funding of around £104 million for Northern Ireland.

In addition, Northern Ireland has benefited from £150 million funding through the Levelling Up Fund, which includes £3.2 million for Ards and North Down Borough Council’s pedestrian and cycle Green-ways and £5.1 million towards Ulster Rugby’s Club Capital Improvement Project, as well as £30 million set aside from Round 3 towards the financial package for the restored executive.

The Community Renewal Fund has provided £12 million in funding to Northern Ireland, which includes projects within the Council areas in the Strangford constituency and projects Northern Ireland wide worth £6.75 million, where the benefits will be felt in Strangford constituency.


Written Question
Housing: Rural Areas
Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent steps his Department has taken to increase the building of homes in rural areas.

Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)

The Government is committed to building more homes, more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably, and we must build homes in the places where people want to live and work.

National planning policy expects local authorities to deliver, where practicable, the amount, type and tenure of new homes our communities need. Each authority is expected to assess and plan how to meet its local housing need over the plan period, and this includes meeting the housing needs of rural communities. Our Rural Exception Sites policy helps local authorities to address the needs of rural communities by accommodating residents and those with family or employment connections to the locality. Rural exception sites tend to be just outside village boundaries, where housing is not normally granted permission.


Written Question
Planning Permission: Standards
Monday 18th March 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking with local authorities to improve the time taken to process planning applications.

Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)

We are taking action to speed up determinations for planning applications in a number of ways. Reforms in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act seek to streamline the development management process and support decisions which are timely, transparent, and of high quality.

The Government has also recently increased planning fees and provided a range of new funding streams through the Government’s capacity and capability programme, including the £29 million Planning Skills Delivery Fund to provide local planning authorities with additional resources needed to deliver a high quality and timely planning service.

In addition to this, on 6 March the Government launched an Accelerated Planning Service consultation. This sets out measures to offer a new application route with accelerated decision dates for major commercial applications and fee refunds wherever these are not met. It also includes measures to more closely monitor the performance of local planning authorities in making decisions within statutory periods rather than using extension of time agreements.


Written Question
Housing: Ownership
Tuesday 5th March 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department is taking steps to help tackle potential distortions of the property market by foreign ownership of residential property in the UK.

Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)

The Government applies a non-resident Stamp Duty Land Tax surcharge of 2 percentage points on overseas purchasers of UK residential property. Companies House collects information about all overseas-based entities owning UK land and we have powers in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act to require more information about land ownership structures, which could help us tackle corruption in the property market and understand where we can take further action.

We recently ran a consultation about increasing the transparency of trusts who own land, which closed on 21 February. Trusts have been identified as a significant blocker to land transparency as their details are kept off all public registers and the results of this consultation will inform how we can intervene.


Written Question
Housing: Northern Ireland
Wednesday 7th February 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent discussions he has had with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive on the availability of housing in Northern Ireland.

Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)

As housing is a devolved matter, there have been no specific recent discussions between the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. However, UK Government officials work closely together with the Northern Ireland Civil Service on a range of issues of mutual concern on a regular basis and where appropriate, including housing.


Written Question
Business: Wind Power
Monday 5th February 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will review the eligibility criteria for businesses to install wind turbines.

Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)

Planning is a devolved matter. In England there are no specific eligibility criteria for businesses in relation to wind turbines. Businesses seeking to install wind turbines for non-domestic purposes will need to apply for planning permission from their relevant local authority.


Written Question
Housing: Construction
Tuesday 23rd January 2024

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to incentivise the development of (a) GP surgeries and (b) other infrastructure in new housing developments.

Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act introduces powers to create the new Infrastructure Levy to reform the existing developer contributions system in England. The mandatory, non-negotiable Levy aims to generate more funding for infrastructure, such as GP surgeries, to mitigate the impacts of new development.


Written Question

Question Link

Wednesday 20th September 2023

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment his Department has made of who was responsible for the cyberattack on Electoral Commission systems in October 2022; and how many people were affected.

Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

It is, and always will be, an absolute priority for this government to protect our democratic and electoral processes. Since the Electoral Commission reported the incident to the National Cyber Security Centre the government has worked closely with the Commission, providing expertise and support to deal with this incident and guard against the risk of future attacks.

The Government does not routinely comment on incident specifics for operational reasons.

The Commission has stated that the information accessible during the cyber attack included the names and addresses of anyone in Great Britain who was registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, and anyone registered in Northern Ireland in 2018. The registers did not include the details of those registered anonymously.


Written Question
Investment Zones: Northern Ireland
Thursday 22nd June 2023

Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent discussions he has had with the Department for Economy on an investment zone in Northern Ireland; and when he plans to introduce such a zone in Northern Ireland.

Answered by Dehenna Davison

The lack of a functioning Northern Ireland Executive has, of course, limited the scope and nature of engagement in Northern Ireland on Investment Zones. Although my officials meet with officials from the Department for Economy regularly, there is no Economy Minister to drive this work forward in Northern Ireland. In the event of a restoration of the Executive, we anticipate that an Investment Zone could be taken forward rapidly. In the event that the Executive is not formed, we will set out our plans in due course.