Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what percentage of eligible British Citizens living overseas submitted a successful application to register to vote in each of the last five years.
Answered by Jacob Young
The data requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the safety of cladding on high rise buildings in England.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government has made clear that building safety is the responsibility of the building owner.
Acting on advice from the Expert Panel, the Government has commissioned research to support further understanding of the fire performance of external wall systems and cladding materials :
We have published advice (updated in January 2020) to building owners on the actions they should take with regards to external wall systems and managing the safety of buildings of all heights.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he has taken to ensure the safety of people who live in high rise buildings; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
In November 2018, the Government introduced a ban on combustible materials in and on the external walls of certain buildings, including blocks of flats more than 18 metres in height. We have more recently consulted on extending the scope of the ban and we will publish the results in due course.
The Government has committed £600 million for the remediation of high-rise residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding. In March 2020, the £1 billion Building Safety Fund was then announced, aimed at remediating other unsafe cladding types on high-rise residential buildings. For high-rise residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding, the Government has worked closely with local authorities and Fire and Rescue Services to ensure that interim safety measures, where needed, are in place until the cladding is replaced.
We have also published advice from the Independent Expert Advisory Panel on the measures building owners should take to ensure their buildings are safe. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-safety-advice-for-building-owners-including-fire-doors
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to tackle homelessness in the UK.
Answered by Nigel Adams
This Government remains clear that one person without a home is one too many, and we are committed to preventing and reducing homelessness and Rough Sleeping.
To achieve this, we have taken a number of important actions, including implementing the most ambitious legislative reform in decades The Homelessness Reduction Act came into force in April 2018.
We have established the Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce that will bring forward the implementation of a cross-Government strategy, to achieve our commitment of halving rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminating it altogether by 2027.
Supporting the Taskforce is the expert Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel. In addition, the Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and Rough Sleeping through to 2020.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the report entitled Everybody In: How to end homelessness in Great Britain, published by Crisis in 2018, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of that report; and if he will make an assessment of the validity of that report's findings on the merits of building 100,500 social homes each year.
Answered by Nigel Adams
The Government is aware homelessness is an issue which goes beyond Westminster, which is why the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel was set up. The panel, of which Crisis CEO Jon Sparkes is a member, provides evidence-based advice which the Government will consider ahead of the upcoming Rough Sleeping Strategy.
This Government is pleased at how aligned the report is with actions we have already taken. The campaign calls for the implementation of schemes such as Housing First. In last autumn’s budget with £28 million worth of funding was announced for pilots in Manchester, Liverpool and the West Midlands.
We are committed to increasing the supply of new social homes. We are investing over £9 billion in affordable housing, and on June 26, this Department announced we will deliver a further 23,000 affordable homes, including at least 12,500 at social rent in high-cost areas, in a move to support families struggling to pay their rent. We have also invited local authorities in high affordability pressure areas to bid for a share of £1 billion extra borrowing to build much-needed homes.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the top-up funding for supported housing tenants given to local authorities is sufficient to make up the shortfall in funding following proposals to limit the level of housing benefit given to supported housing tenants to the level of local housing allowance.
Answered by Marcus Jones
Developing a workable and sustainable funding model for supported housing is a priority for the Government. We will set out further details on our plans later in the autumn.
Asked by: Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Labour - Life peer)
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 ensure that vulnerable people living in supported housing get the financial support needed to access adequately supported accommodation.
Answered by Marcus Jones
Developing a workable and sustainable funding model for supported housing is a priority for the Government. We will set out further details on our plans later in the autumn.