Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the average waiting time to receive an External Wall Fire Review form (EWS1) for buildings with recently remediated cladding in the most recent period for which figures are available.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
An EWS1 form is not a statutory requirement nor a safety ‘test’. It is a form used for valuation and was introduced by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), together with UK Finance and the Building Societies Association. The Government is therefore not able to estimate the waiting time to receive an EWS1.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how many trained EW1S building safety certifiers work in London.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
An EWS1 form is not a statutory requirement nor a safety ‘test’. It is a form used for valuation and was introduced by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), together with UK Finance and the Building Societies Association.
The Government has provided RICS with nearly £700,000 to develop and deliver training for assessors to carry out external wall system assessments across England. A full list of course completers can be found on RICS’ website. EWS1s may also be conducted by a variety of professionals from across the construction industry. RICS have published a non exhaustive list of suggested bodies to contact and source fire experts.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if his Department will fund the waking watch costs incurred since 5 May 2022 of (a) Fitzgerald House despite the closure of the waking watch fund in March 2022.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The application period for the Waking Watch Replacement Fund closed on 28 March 2022. The fund is designed to cover the costs of installing a common fire alarm system to replace Waking Watch measures where the costs of the Waking Watch are being passed onto leaseholders. We understand that a Waking Watch was installed at Fitzgerald House on 5 May. My officials have spoken to the managing agents for the building who inform us that they are taking steps to mitigate the risk in the building. The steps being taken will remove the need for a Waking Watch without recourse to a common fire alarm system.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department has taken to ensure there is a supply of qualified builders and engineers to undertake cladding remediation works.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Remediation of buildings with unsafe cladding must be carried out by professionals with appropriate competence and experience, and anyone applying for public funds is required to demonstrate that their remediation plan meets those requirements. Demand for those professionals is high and the Government is working with industry to increase the supply of trained professionals
We are supporting industry-led work to raise competence standards for safety-critical roles, including fire engineers, structural engineers, installers and fire risk assessors and provisions in the Building Safety Bill will increase competence requirements. We are supporting industry-led work to upskill professionals in those roles, including investing nearly £700k to train assessors to carry out valuations where EWS1 forms are required (over 1,000 people now enrolled in a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors course).
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when he plans to bring forward legislative proposals to implement the leasehold reforms referred to by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in her oral contribution of 11 July 2019, Official report, column 552.
Answered by Esther McVey
The Government is committed to reforming the leasehold market so that it is fairer for consumers. This includes banning new leasehold houses, unless there are exceptional circumstances, and reducing ground rents for both houses and flats to zero
We will also give freeholders on private and mixed-tenure estates the right to challenge the reasonableness of these charges and the ability to apply to the First-tier Tribunal to appoint a new property manager
The Government will bring forward the legislation to implement these changes as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what (a) financial and (b) staffing assistance the Government has provided to local authorities responding to extreme weather events in the last 12 months.
Answered by Jake Berry
On 10 August, the Government announced that local communities and businesses impacted by the previous week’s heavy rain and flooding will have access to up to £5.25 million to support their recovery.
Over the last 12 months my Department has made payments totalling £418,579 to four local authorities to assist them in responding to severe weather incidents. This includes £150,000 that my Department provided to High Peak Borough Council to support the community following the Toddbrook Reservoir incident.
Recently, my Department also announced Bellwin support towards response costs for authorities in North Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in respect of flooding in those areas over the summer and for High Peaks Council with respect to the Toddbrook Reservoir incident. We await their claims.
In all the above cases, no additional staffing assistance was provided.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is unable to provide details about what financial and staffing assistance was provided by other departments to local authorities in response to those severe weather incidents.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will publish an impact assessment of the effectiveness of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
We have committed to reviewing the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act, including the resourcing of it and how it is working in practice for a wide group of people, by March 2020. We have published a call for evidence and are inviting all with an interest to respond by October 15 2019, and have commissioned ICF to undertake an independent review of how the Act has been implemented by different areas.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of people living in temporary accommodation; and what steps he is taking to improve the living conditions of those people.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
The total number of households living in temporary accommodation, provided by local authorities under their statutory homelessness duties is 83,700 as at the 31 December 2018.
Homelessness is a big priority for the government. In the rough sleeping strategy, the previous Secretary of State indicated the Government is committed to taking steps to tackle wider homelessness issues, including the numbers of families in Temporary Accommodation (TA) and poor-quality accommodation.
The Government has targeted funding streams focused on reducing the number of households in TA as part of our £1.2 billion spending programme. Earlier this year, we announced £19.5 million for 54 projects through the Private Rented Sector Access Fund that will enable thousands of households to be supported away from TA and into long term Private Rented accommodation.
We have also committed £37.8 million of funding to launch the London Collaboration Project (Capital Letters) - a project which works with London boroughs to improve the supply of homes, reduce the cost to local authorities of procuring these homes and achieve better outcomes for homeless families through a centralised procurement process.
We are working with other government departments to assess what more can be done to address the number of people in TA. This work is being overseen by the Ministerial Taskforce on homelessness and rough sleeping. This may result in joint Spending Review bids to address the issues of homelessness as well as its causes and consequences. We will consider the potential to publish a wider cross government action plan on homelessness in the future, which will build on the work we already have in train, ensure progress is made on wider issues relating to all forms of homelessness and homelessness prevention’
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
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 potential merits of reinstating the Migration Impact Fund.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
We launched the Controlling Migration Fund in October 2016, with £100 million available over four years, to provide additional support to local areas that are facing pressure as a result of recent migration. To date we have funded £74 million.
The deadline for bids from local authorities for a share of the remaining £26 million in the Fund was 1 October 2018. My officials are assessing the applications that were submitted and successful projects will be announced in the new year. We will consider how best to continue to provide support for areas in response to the impacts of recent migration as part of the next Spending Review.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of Government funding for local authorities on local authority spending on sports and recreation.
Answered by Rishi Sunak
Local authorities are the single biggest investors in community sport, spending around £1 billion a year. 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.