Andy Carter

Following the Area Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) inspection of Warrington Local Area Partnership (LAP), conducted by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission and published in May 2023, departmental officials have been working alongside NHS England SEND advisers to provide support and challenge to the LAP to address the areas for improvement highlighted in the report. These areas for improvement include:

• The efficiency and quality of information gathering processes.
• Health services that better meet children and young people’s needs.
• The effectiveness of systems to share information about children and young people’s needs.
• The timeliness of Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans.

Responding to the inspection report, Warrington LAP have updated their SEND strategy and published a strategic SEND improvement plan. This sets out how the Partnership will improve services for children and young people with SEND in the area and address the areas for improvement highlighted in the inspection report. The department monitors progress against these plans at regular intervals. Both documents are available at: https://www.warrington.gov.uk/send-inspection-review.

In 2022, the rate of EHC plans, excluding exceptions, issued within 20 weeks in Warrington was 48.2%, compared with a national average of 49.2%. This data is accessible at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans.

The department has increased Warrington's dedicated schools grant from £190 million in 2021/22 to over £238 million in 2024/25. This includes an increase of 33% in the high needs block from £25.6 million in 2021 to over £34.2 million in 2024/25.

To support strategic decision-making, the department will introduce new local Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) partnerships that bring together delivery partners across local systems to support local authorities to strategically plan and commission support for children and young people with SEND and in AP. Partnerships will be expected to co-produce a Local Area Inclusion Plan based on robust evidence that will explain how the needs of children and young people aged 0-25 in the area will be met. The department is providing local authorities with guidance on partnerships and plans throughout the year to strengthen local governance and decision-making for SEND and AP and services. Soon, the department will be launching a national and local inclusion dashboard that will present published data on system health and performance to enable better decision-making at a national and local level and drive self-improvement across local areas.

The department is also testing, via the Change Programme, whether using Multi Agency Panels for decision making about individuals in the Education, Health and Care plan process improves decision-making and parental confidence.

The Government has committed £24 million to boost literacy in schools in the 2022/23 academic year. The majority of this funding will be distributed via the English Hubs programme.

The focus in the first two years of the programme has been on phonics teaching, with early language and reading for pleasure as secondary aims. In the third and fourth delivery year, English Hubs continue to focus on systematic synthetic phonics. A number of English Hubs have already started to deliver support in all three priority areas, including early language. In January 2023, the Hubs will begin delivering new early language training to schools, which has been designed by Hubs and external experts.

In total, the department has announced almost £5 billion for an ambitious, multi-year education recovery plan to support young people to catch up on missed learning.

As part of education recovery, the department is investing up to £180 million of recovery support in the early years sector. Strengthening understanding of speech and language development is an important part of this support.

The recovery includes investing in continuous professional development for early years practitioners, through the national expansion of the early years Professional Development Programme, which has a focus on upskilling practitioners to support the early development of literacy and language and early mathematics, alongside personal, social, and emotional development. The department is also investing over £24 million for local authorities to select and train early years practitioners in the best programmes to support parents with the home learning environment. This aims to improve children’s early language and social and emotional development, giving priority to families that will benefit the most.

Additionally, the department is investing £17 million for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI), which is a proven programme aimed at the reception aged children needing extra support with their speech and language development. We are also increasing the number of qualified special educational needs coordinators in early years settings.

The Recovery Premium, providing £1.3 billion for the 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years, is additional funding to help schools deliver evidence-based approaches to support education recovery. Recovery Premium eligibility builds on that of the pupil premium. However, school leaders have flexibility to use the funding to support any pupil where a need is identified, including those with speech and language difficulties. Schools can use their funding to assess and address immediate needs, such as those relating to speech and language difficulties, as well as longer-term strategic improvements, such as boosting the quality of oracy teaching.

The Parent Pledge in the Schools White Paper will also make the department’s vision clear that any child who falls behind in English or mathematics will receive the right evidence-based targeted support to get them back on track.

The Government has committed over £100 million to support vulnerable and disadvantaged children in England to access remote education and social care services, including by providing laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers.

We are providing laptops and tablets to disadvantaged children who would otherwise not have access and are preparing for examinations in year 10, receiving support from a social worker or are a care leaver. Where care leavers, children with a social worker at secondary school and children in year 10 do not have internet connections, we are providing 4G wireless routers.

The Department has ordered over 200,000 laptops and tablets and allocated devices to local authorities and academy trusts based on its estimates of the number of eligible children that do not have access to a device. Local authorities and academy trusts are best place to identify and prioritise children and young people who need devices. The Department is working to provide these devices in the shortest possible timeframe; deliveries to schools and local authorities began in May and have continued throughout June. As of 14 June, we have shipped over 100,000 laptops and 20,000 4G routers, including 481 to Warrington for children with a social worker and care leavers and 45 for disadvantaged year 10 pupils.

The Department has published information about how many laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers we have delivered or dispatched to local authorities and academy trusts as of 14 June, which can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/laptops-tablets-and-4g-wireless-routers-progress-data.

As of 23 October 2023, there were 571,820 car practical driving tests booked, and 72,787 driving tests available within the 24-week booking window.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is taking all the measures it can to reduce driving test waiting times. This includes carrying out overtime, such as at weekends and on public holidays, buying back annual leave from driving examiners (DE) and, inviting recently retired DEs to return to work.

Since April 2021, measures put in place by the DVSA to reduce waiting times for its customers, together with the ongoing recruitment of DEs, is creating on average over 40,000 extra car test slots each month.

The DVSA has also deployed all eligible managers and administrative staff back on the front line to do driving tests from the beginning of October 2023 until the end of March 2024, which will create around 150,000 test slots.

Local highway authorities have a duty under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980, as amended, to maintain the highways network in their area. The Act does not set out specific standards of maintenance, as it is for each local highway authority to assess which parts of its network need repair and what standards should be applied, based upon their local knowledge and circumstances. The Government does not intervene or override local decisions in these matters.

Well-planned maintenance to prevent potholes and other defects from forming in the first place is vital, and the Department advocates a risk-based, whole life-cycle asset management approach to all aspects of the local highway network.

To assist local authorities in treating potholes and other road defects, the Department worked with the Association of Directors, for Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) to publish in 2019 Potholes: a repair guide.

The Government has committed £915 million per year for local highways maintenance for local highway authorities outside London and Mayoral Combined Authorities, for the three years starting 2022-23, which includes pothole funding.

Well-planned maintenance to prevent potholes and other defects from forming in the first place is vital, and the Department advocates a risk-based, whole life-cycle asset management approach to all aspects of the local highway network.

To assist local authorities in treating potholes and other road defects, the Department worked with the Association of Directors, for Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) to publish Potholes: a repair guide.

The management of local roads, including provision of cycling facilities, is the responsibility of individual local traffic authorities. It is for them to ensure their streets are designed to provide safe movement for all road users. The Department has published updated guidance on Cycle Infrastructure Design to help local authorities deliver high quality cycle infrastructure in the future which can be accessed at www.gov.uk/government/publications/cycle-infrastructure-design-ltn-120. Cycling clearly does not work for everyone, or for every journey. But the more people that cycle, the more roadspace is freed up for those who really need to drive. High-quality infrastructure is a key part of enabling this.

The National Cycle Network (NCN), managed by Sustrans, is a UK-wide network of signed paths and routes for walking and cycling. It stretches over 12,000 miles and in 2019 an estimated 4.2 million people used the NCN to make almost 650 million journeys. Over 50% of journeys were made by modes other than a bicycle including equestrians.

On 14 May 2022 the Department announced £35m of funding for the National Cycle Network to deliver improved surfacing, widened paths and greater accessibility, such as the removal of barriers that impact disabled people and cyclists. Many of these projects are focused on canal towpaths, which are important elements of many local cycling and walking networks.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that those who are eligible for the shingles vaccine should change, to allow individuals to be protected at an earlier age, particularly those that have a weakened immune system. Based on the evidence, they recognised that there may be more clinical benefit from starting shingles vaccinations at a lower age, with modelling indicating that a greater number of cases of shingles would be prevented with vaccination at 60 years old for immunocompetent individuals, and 50 years old for immunosuppressed individuals. The committee advised that the programme should be implemented in stages, starting with those that are over 50 years old with a weakened immune system and those turning 65 and 70 years old, then eventually moving down to those turning 60 years old. This is a similar pattern to the roll out of the shingles vaccine from 2013. This is why the vaccine offer has been expanded to all those turning 65 and 70 years old and all those over 50 years old with a weakened immune system, from 1 September 2023. The programme began on 1 September 2023 and will run until 31 August 2028, offering the vaccine to people as they turn 65 and 70 years old, until the offer has been made to all those aged 65 to 70 years old. It will then expand to offering the vaccine to all those that are turning 60 and 65 years old, from 1 September 2028.

The shingles vaccine is available through general practice (GP) surgeries in primary care, and GPs are required to identify and put in place a call or recall arrangement to offer the shingles vaccination to eligible patients. All eligible patients are contacted by their GP surgery to invite them for vaccination. The GP will then follow up with letters or with calls and text messages, to encourage eligible people that have not come forward to take up the offer.

There is a wide range of public facing information to help increase uptake of the shingles vaccine, and to publicise the programme in GP surgeries and online, including display bunting, leaflets, and posters. GPs are also adding messages regarding shingles to their practice websites, prescription counterfoils, and social media banners. Public facing information regarding the shingles vaccination programme includes translations into over 20 different languages including braille, audio, large print, and British Sign Language. Information for healthcare professionals, including GP toolkits for improving uptake of shingles vaccination, has also been produced and published by local immunisation commissioning teams.

Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients and since the end of January, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients.

We are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress once available. Dentists have two months from the date of completion of a course of NHS treatment to submit an FP17 claim for payment.

In July 2023, Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS) delivered 1,997 more gastroscopy procedures in July 2023 than in July 2018. Alongside this increase of almost 2,000 procedures, 70% of patients who require a gastroscopy are now seen within six weeks.

Cheshire and Merseyside ICS has also secured funding to support the delivery of more than 1,000 additional endoscopy procedures across Cheshire and Merseyside by the end of December 2023. Cheshire and Merseyside’s Diagnostic Programme is also progressing a number of workforce initiatives including a collaborative staff bank for the endoscopy workforce and an endoscopy academy to provide training and upskilling for the endoscopy workforce.

Cutting National Health Service waiting lists, including for endoscopy services, is one of this Government’s top priorities. This is a shared ambition amongst ICSs, including the Cheshire and Merseyside ICS.

£2.3 billion was awarded at the 2021 Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years to increase diagnostic capacity, including for endoscopy services. This funding will also increase the number of community diagnostic centres up to 160 by March 2025, including a number delivering endoscopy services.

In September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Warrington. These will increase access to NHS dentistry whilst making the NHS dental contract more attractive to dental practices.

We have taken action to implement these changes, including through regulations that came into effect on 25th November 2022. The changes include a contractual requirement for NHS dentists to keep their NHS.UK profiles up to date, adherence to risk-based recall intervals, and enabling dentists to make better use of their team resources. The contractual changes of 28th December 2022 also provide for the commissioning of 110% of contracted Units of Dental Activities so that practices can deliver more NHS care, particularly in those areas where NHS dentistry is less prevalent.

NHS England is holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for additional reforms of the NHS Dental System planned to take place in 2023

The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Since 2018, the NIHR has invested approximately £41 million through research programmes on pharmaceutical trials in mental health. Of this, £836,772 has been awarded to organisations in the North West of England. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including mental health. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality. It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions.

Advisory Fuel Rates apply when an employer reimburses an employee for business travel in a company car, or when an employee reimburses an employer for the cost of fuel used for private travel. Rates vary by engine size and fuel type and are reviewed quarterly. There are no current plans to introduce a specific advisory rate for hybrid vehicles.

The Advisory Fuel Rates are not mandatory. Employers and employees can instead agree to reimburse different amounts, subject to certain tax conditions.

The taxation of interest arising on savings bonds depends on the terms and conditions applying to each and may differ as not all savings bonds are the same.

Income tax is charged on the full amount of interest ‘arising’ to a person in a tax year and interest normally ‘arises’ when the amount is received or is credited to an account on which the holder is free to draw.

The terms of a savings bond may be that interest is credited each year and, once credited, the bondholder is able to draw on it. In this case, the interest arises each year and is taxed each year as it is credited.

On the other hand, it is possible that interest may be credited each year, but the terms of the bond may mean the bondholder cannot draw on it or benefit from it until the end of the term. In that case all the interest paid on the bond would be regarded as ‘arising’ when it became available to the bondholder on maturity of the bond.

This long-standing position is explained in HMRC’s guidance at SAIM2440, and there have been no recent changes.

In either case, to the extent that the interest arising in any year is not covered by personal allowances, such as the Personal Savings Allowance, the tax will be collected in the same way, usually through a taxpayer’s PAYE code or a self-assessment tax return.

The Home Office, as the Department responsible for fire safety, publishes a suite of guides to help Responsible Persons (RPs) understand and meet their legal duties under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (FSO), and regulations made under Article 24 of the FSO, in specific types of premises including high rise purpose-built blocks of flats. This includes guidance on how to meet their legal duties in relation to providing instructions for residents on what action to take in the event of a fire.

The Home Office has also issued guidance on the new legal duties RPs have to ensure residents are aware of the steps they are required to take in the event of a fire as part of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 that came into force on 23 January 2023.

In February, the Government published a total police funding settlement of up to £15.8 billion in 2021/22.

This is an increase of up to £600 million compared to 2020/21 and cements our commitment to give the police the resources they need to keep the public safe.

The Department's latest publication on its regional expenditure with UK industry and commerce and supported employment for 2021-22 is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/mod-regional-expenditure-with-uk-industry-and-supported-employment-202122.

The MOD remains committed to its aim of ensuring the UK continues to have a world-leading defence and security industrial base. In 2021-22, over £21 billion of around £23.4 billion overall expenditure with industry was spent in the UK. These statistics relate to expenditure within the UK, based on the location of where work has taken place, and do not take account of corporate structure and ultimate ownership of each company.

It is not the role of Homes England to offer financial advice to Help to Buy: Equity Loan customers. Customers are advised to consider seeking independent advice before making any financial decisions. I have asked Departmental officials to reach out to my Hon Friend to discuss this further.

This Government will reset our national homeownership offer – ensuring local people and key workers have the opportunity to build a life in their own community.

First Homes, our new homeownership programme, will discount homes by at least 30 per cent for key workers, local people, and first-time buyers – including those who have done so much to respond to the Covid-19 outbreak. We recently closed our consultation on First Homes and will publish our response soon.

At the same time our new £12 billion investment in affordable homes will create thousands of new homes for Shared Ownership.

And all of this adds to other Government-backed schemes, including Help to Buy, which have supported over 627,000 households into homeownership since 2010.

The condition of the court estate matters – for the standing of the justice system in our society, but also for all court users, including the victims and witnesses who rely on the courts to see justice done.

We have significantly increased the budget to maintain the court and tribunal estate. The £220m two-year settlement is already enabling major estates projects to be planned with certainty and efficiency.