Asked by: Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help maintain (a) Bournemouth's coastline and (b) the cleanliness of bathing water.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is taking a range of steps to maintain Bournemouth’s coastline. The Environment Agency (EA) has developed and maintains a strong professional partnership with the local authority, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, through which the EA has jointly secured an investment of £36 million between 2020 and 2027 for a flood management scheme to better protect 3,361 homes from coastal erosion and deliver over £1 billion of benefit to the local community. £17.5 million was invested between 2015 and 2020 in beach management to renourish the beach and replace timber groynes. Additionally, there are currently works on site at Hengistbury Head to the eastern end of Poole Bay to repair and upgrade the vital coastal asset known as ‘Long Groyne’ with new rock, at a cost of £12 million. In addition, there are numerous ongoing studies into flood and erosion risk, such as investigating more locally sustainable sources of beach nourishment for Bournemouth, and the delivery of a cliff management strategy for the whole of Poole Bay to better manage historic poor drainage and land instability of the cliff top.
The Government is committed to improving the quality of our bathing waters. Almost 90% of bathing waters in England met the highest standards of ‘good' or ‘excellent’ in 2023, up from just 76% in 2010 and despite the classification standards becoming stricter in 2015. Bournemouth has eight designated bathing waters; last season one was classified as ‘good’ and seven as ‘excellent’.
Asked by: Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Spring Budget 2024, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of locating one of the 15 new special free schools in Bournemouth.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The department received a total of 85 applications from local authorities to open a special free school in the most recent, very competitive application round, including two applications from Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole Council.
The department plans to select 15 successful applications from the pool of applications. This will remain a competitive process. The approach means the department can move quickly to appoint trusts to run these schools.
The department plans to announce those local authorities which have been successful for the additional special free schools by May 2024.
Asked by: Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to support Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council with (a) recycling and (b) rubbish collections.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is introducing Simpler Recycling to ensure that across England, people will be able to recycle the same materials, no longer needing to check what their council will accept for recycling. The costs to deliver the new duties on local authorities for this reform will be funded by a combination of Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility payments provided to local authorities for the cost of collecting and managing household packaging waste through efficient and effective services, and reasonable new burdens funding from the Government to provide weekly food waste collections. We have brought forward up to £295 million in capital funding to roll out weekly food waste collections across England. This will cover the cost of additional bins and vehicles. Initial grants have now been issued to local authorities, including Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, for their transitional capital funding allocation for financial year 2023/24. Transitional resource costs will be paid from the 2024/25 financial year and ongoing resource costs paid from 1 April 2026.