Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department recovered from local authorities disposing of grant-funded assets under the requirements of the Sure Start Early Years and Childcare Grant in each of the last three years.

The decision whether to dispose of grant funded assets is a local issue. Where local authorities dispose of or change the use of buildings or other assets funded wholly or partly through Sure Start capital grants, they must repay the money through the claw-back process. Details of the monitoring arrangements in place regarding claw-back rules are set out at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2016-02-24/28205/. Further details of terms and conditions regarding claw-back are available in Sure Start capital guidance published by the department in December 2009 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/273740/capital_guidance.pdf.

A list of the local authorities who have notified the department of plans to dispose of, transfer or change the use of assets funded by Sure Start capital grants is available at attached. We do not hold a separate list of those local authorities who notified the department of plans to dispose of assets.

A list of the amount of money that has been recovered in each of the last three years from local authorities disposing of, transferring or changing the use of grant-funded assets is set out below

[1]The department did not clawback any funding in 2016 but decisions about whether or not to claw-back funding from three of the local authorities who notified the department of the disposal, transfer or change of use of Sure Start grant-funded in 2016 are still pending.