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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 12 June 2014 to Question 198864, when he anticipates that his Department will be able to introduce major policies informed by the Government's wellbeing indicators.

The Department for Communities and Local Government aims to create great places to live and work, and give more power to local people to shape what happens in their area. As such, many or most of the Department's policies are already concerned with individual or community wellbeing, such as:

• changing the way services are run, so people get a service suited to them, and are not passed around between different organisations;
• helping design better local services through the cross-Whitehall Public Service Transformation Network;
• making sure health and social care services work better together through a £3.8 billion Better Care Fund in 2015-16;
• turning around the lives of troubled families – cutting crime, getting children back into school and helping people into jobs;
• recognising, through the National Planning Policy Framework, that the planning system can make an important contribution to the health and wellbeing of communities; and
• giving communities a range of new rights with regards to local services and decisions, through the Localism Act. Community rights processes and outcomes can contribute to people’s sense of wellbeing.

In its response to the Environmental Audit Committee, published in August 2014, the Government agreed it needs to do more to understand what works to influence and improve wellbeing. This would address the Committee’s finding that personal well-being data “have yet to be developed to a state where they can identify the cause-and-effect links that would be needed for policy-making” (paragraphs 12 and 28). http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmenvaud/639/639.pdf

The Department supports efforts to build the evidence base on wellbeing for policy makers and local decision makers in a number of ways, including:

• contributing £100,000 per year for three years to the What Works Centre for Wellbeing which was launched in October 2014, and shaping the call for research proposals for evidence on ‘Community Wellbeing’ that will be relevant to departmental policies. http://whatworkswellbeing.org/
• collaborating in a public dialogue, funded by the Cabinet Office and Sciencewise, exploring the relationship between government policies, including the Community Rights, and wellbeing. The report was published on 5 November. http://www.neweconomics.org/talkingwellbeing
• adding the four questions developed by the Office for National Statistics to measure personal wellbeing to the English Housing Survey. We will release initial finding on wellbeing and housing circumstances in the headline report in February 2015.