Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to Annex A of his Department's Explanatory Memorandum to the Main Estimate 2013-14, how much of the money allocated for Community Rights, Integration and Big Society was allocated to (a) community rights, (b) integration and (c) the Big Society in (i) 2012-13, (ii) 2013-14 and (iii) 2014-15.

As is the norm for departmental spending under this and previous Administrations, actual outturn estimates will vary from initial allocations, reflecting the activity of the individual programmes within the budget headings and the profile of how money is spent. The Explanatory Memorandum was prepared in February 2013, published in July 2013, and is a snapshot of the notional allocations at that point in time; in turn, it reported on changes from the 2012-13 Supplementary Estimate.

Explanatory Memorandum 2013-14 Main Estimates: Budget Allocations

For the latest outturn estimates for integration, I refer the rt. hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made by my rt. hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Communities and Lcoal Government (Eric Pickles) today. The figure for Big Society and Community rights are as follows:

We received unbudgeted income of £2 million in 2012-13 and £1.6 million in 2013-14 (a legacy of the New Deal for Communities); in turn, this has reduced the outturn figures for Big Society and Community Rights allocations, but not the actual spending (as the income reduces the request for funding for the Department from the public purse).

The Community Rights programmes are part of our Big Society agenda. Some funding was re-classified after the 2011 Spending Review moving to the ‘Integration’ heading. These accounting categories are somewhat arbitrary – as many of our integration projects are about putting the Big Society principles in practice: empowering individuals, neighbourhoods and communities to solve problems and improve quality of life. I refer the rt. hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made by my Rt hon Friend, the Secretary of State (Eric Pickles) today, which lists the integration projects we have funded to illustrate this point.