Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on how many new build homes in receipt of funding from his Department has work commenced in (a) Batley and Spen constituency, (b) Kirklees and (c) West Yorkshire in each of the last three years.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The table below provides a breakdown of the total number of new build homes that have commenced over the last three years funded by Homes England. Please note that data is not held at constituency level. York is defined as a “non-constituent” local authority in the founding Combined Authority Order 2014, the table therefore provides separate columns to show the data with and without the contribution of York. Further details of Homes England’s delivery data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-1-april-2019-to-31-march-2020.
Year | Kirklees Total | West Yorkshire Total (excluding York) | West Yorkshire Total (including York) |
2017/18 | 51 | 1,116 | 1,280 |
2018/19 | 115 | 1,143 | 1,181 |
2019/20 | 151 | 1,289 | 1,565 |
2020/21 (To September 2020) | 3 | 88 | 175 |
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on how many new social homes in receipt of funding from his Department has work commenced in (a) Batley and Spen constituency, (b) Kirklees and (c) West Yorkshire in each of the last three years.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The table below provides a breakdown of the total number of new social homes that have commenced over the last three years funded by Homes England. Please note that data is not held at constituency level. York is defined as a “non-constituent” local authority in the founding Combined Authority Order 2014, the table therefore provides separate columns to show the data with and without the contribution of York. Further details of Homes England’s delivery data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-1-april-2019-to-31-march-2020.
Year | Kirklees Total | West Yorkshire Total (excluding York) | West Yorkshire Total (including York) |
2017/18 | 36 | 932 | 1,096 |
2018/19 | 63 | 796 | 805 |
2019/20 | 35 | 985 | 1,153 |
2020/21 (To September 2020) | 3 | 83 | 160 |
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
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 explicitly including universities as potential recipients of the Levelling Up Fund.
Answered by Luke Hall
The Levelling Up Fund will invest in local infrastructure that has a visible impact on people and their communities and will support economic recovery.
The Fund will be jointly managed by the Treasury, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Department for Transport. It will invest in a broad range of high value local projects, including bypasses and other local road schemes, bus lanes, rail station upgrades, regenerating eyesores, upgrading town centres and community infrastructure, and local arts and culture.
We will publish a prospectus for the Fund soon.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
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 is taking to ensure homelessness does not increase as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme comes to an end.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Government has introduced the Job Support Scheme as part of a wider package to protect incomes and has injected over £9 billion into the welfare system, which will support people with housing costs.
This includes increasing the Local Housing Allowance rates for Universal Credit and Housing Benefit claimants so that they are set at the 30 th percentile of market rents. £180 million of Discretionary Housing Payments are available for those who require additional support, and local authorities continue to provide their statutory homelessness duties.
Legislation has also been introduced requiring landlords to give tenants 6 months’ notice before they can progress eviction cases to court, except in the most serious circumstances. Where cases do reach court, new rules require landlords to inform judges if tenants have been impacted by coronavirus and to re-activate cases from before 3 August.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what powers the proposed Mayor of West Yorkshire will have.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Government announced at the Budget on 11 March that agreement had been reached on an ambitious devolution deal with West Yorkshire.
The full text of the deal, setting out the powers the West Yorkshire Mayor and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority will have, as well as the funding streams to be provided, including over £1.1 billion of investment funding for the area, is now available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/west-yorkshire-devolution-deal .
The conferral of powers and implementation of the deal is subject to the statutory requirements for the necessary secondary legislation being met, including the consent of the West Yorkshire Councils to, and Parliamentary approval of, that legislation.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
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 speech made in Halifax by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth, what plans he has for a secretary of state for the north of England.
Answered by Jake Berry
Though questions about the machinery of Government are not for me to decide, my comments reflect the importance of the Northern Powerhouse to this Government. We are committed to delivering power and money away from Whitehall, through the establishment of Mayoral combined authorities and growth deals and devolution deals across the North worth over £5 billion.