Asked by: Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of local authorities in regulating taxi and private hire vehicles.
Answered by Sajid Javid
Local authorities must ensure appropriate standards to support safe and quality services for passengers. However, as part of exercising this duty, any licencing decisions should support open, competitive and functioning markets.
Asked by: Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the time, cost and complexity of processes to bring redundant publicly owned land back into use.
Answered by Lord Barwell
This Government has a target to release land with capacity for 160,000 homes by 2020 and is encouraging local authorities to do the same.
The Government has recently announced £1.7 billion of investment for an Accelerated Construction programme that will enable us to get started on up to 15,000 homes by the end of this Parliament.
Planning reforms, including Permission in Principle and Brownfield Registers, will deliver a more efficient planning system.
Asked by: Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with housing associations on reducing or removing Government control over rent setting.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
In order to control the housing benefit bill, the Government is reducing social housing rents by 1% per annum over the coming four years to 2019-20. The Government has constant and on-going dialogue with the sector and lenders. We will consider rent setting policy from 2020 at future fiscal events.
Asked by: Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with housing associations on flexibility in the time allowed to spend capital receipts from Right to Buy.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Under the terms of the historic voluntary agreement between the Government and the sector, the Government will compensate housing associations for the value of the Right to Buy discount. In return, housing associations will deliver at least one additional new home for each home sold nationally. They will have flexibility in relation to the tenure and location of the additional homes built. It is a mutual objective to ensure that additional homes would be delivered as quickly as possible. The aim is to deliver the new properties within two years. The historic grant portion of any receipt released by the property sale will go back into the Recycled Capital Grant Fund. Under the current rules for that Fund receipts must be spent within three years or returned to the Homes and Communities Agency.
Asked by: Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with housing associations on flexibility on the mandatory 20 per cent discount for the section 106 starter homes.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Ministers have had discussions with many different organisations regarding the Government’s commitment to build 200,000 Starter Homes to help young, first time buyers into home ownership. The 20 per cent discount on a starter home is a minimum discount and any increase will be negotiated locally. Legislation is currently being taken forward through the Housing and Planning Bill to bring these commitments into effect.
Asked by: Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when the Government will inform local authorities of the increased funding that will be available for housing Syrian refugees.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
The first 12 months of a refugee's resettlement costs are funded by Government using the Overseas Development Aid budget.
In November 2015 the Government announced around £129 million to assist with local authority costs over years 2-5 for those local authorities who are resettlling refugees under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. This is unringfenced funding and it will be for local authorities to decide how to use the funding to support the refugees they resettle.