Cameron Thomas

Project Gigabit is the government’s programme to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to UK premises, including schools, that are not included in suppliers' commercial plans.

Alongside connecting premises through a series of Project Gigabit contracts across the UK, we are currently delivering a specific project in partnership with the Department for Education which is set to give a further 780 schools access to a fast, reliable broadband connection.

Earlier government-funded programmes have already delivered gigabit-capable connections to over 2,400 schools.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, has access to and benefits from quality sport and physical activity opportunities, and that high-quality, inclusive facilities help ensure everyone has access to sport.

The Government provides the majority of funding for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding in areas of greatest need to tackle inactivity levels through community-led solutions.

We are also supporting more players in getting onto the pitch wherever they live via the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme, which has invested £123 million UK-wide throughout 2024/25. Projects include funding for artificial grass pitches, floodlights, and maintenance machinery, helping sites to improve availability all year round. Funding from the Programme continues to be invested in England through our delivery partner, the Football Foundation. This funding is structured so that areas that need it most are prioritised, taking both local inactivity rates and deprivation into account.

The Football Foundation plans their investment pipeline based on Local Football Facility Plans (LFFPs). These plans have been developed in partnership with local authorities and are in the process of being refreshed to reflect the current landscape. The existing LFFP for Tewkesbury can be found here.

The Autumn Budget on 30 October 2024 committed the Government to continued support for elite and grassroots sport through future investment. Further details will be confirmed in due course.

The Government is dedicated to supporting every aspect of women’s sport and ensuring all women and girls, no matter their background, have access to high quality sport.

We want to break down the barriers that exist and prevent women and girls from being active including but not limited to kit, facilities, time and cost. This Girl Can, which recently celebrated its ten year anniversary, is an inspiring campaign that has promoted women’s sport, challenged prejudice and made clear that sport is for everyone.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding. Separately, as a government, we are investing £123 million in inclusive grassroots sport facilities that will support more women and girls to take part in the sports that they love.

In the last financial year, 2023-24, Sport England awarded £50,834 to the Tewkesbury constituency.

Sustainability of local journalism is an area of particular concern for this Government, across the country and in Gloucestershire and other rural areas.

We are developing a Local Media Strategy, in recognition of the importance of this vital sector. Our vision is a thriving local media that can continue to play an invaluable role as a key channel of trustworthy information at local level, reporting on the issues that matter to communities, reflecting their contributions and perspectives, and helping to foster a self-confident nation in which everyone feels that their contribution is part of an inclusive national story.

We are working across Government and with other stakeholders as the Strategy develops and will announce further details in due course.

The Employment Relations Act (ERA) 1999 states that teachers, like any other workers, are entitled to be accompanied by a colleague, a trade union employee or an official accredited by a trade union if called to a disciplinary or grievance meeting by their employer. Individuals may also ask to be accompanied by someone else, but the employer does not have to agree. The government has no plans to change that position for teachers.

I refer the hon. Member for Tewkesbury to the answer of 14 February 2025 to Question 29516.

Previously, a three-year mixed-method evaluation was carried out by the Institute of Public Care (IPC), Oxford Brookes University (2018-2021), on behalf of the department. The report found that ‘a high proportion (83%) of parents and guardians participating in the longitudinal survey found the funded support helpful or very helpful overall.’ The IPC report also found ‘a statistically significant (substantial, with large effect size) improvement in parent and guardian estimates of the extent to which the main aim of the funded support had been met by the end of the intervention’ and reported that parents and guardians scored on average ‘7 out of 10 in relation to a question about the extent to which positive change(s) for their child and/or family had been sustained six months since the conclusion of ASF-funded support.’ The full report can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6391c41a8fa8f53ba783e8ad/Evaluation_of_the_Adoption_Support_Fund_2018_to_2022_-_summary_.pdf.

The adequacy of the therapies available within the adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF) is currently being assessed from multiple angles. The National Institute for Health Research is currently conducting a randomised control trial into dyadic developmental psychotherapy (DDP), one of the main therapies the ASGSF funds. This research is currently in the third and final phase and will give robust evidence into the effectiveness of DDP. Moreover, the department started to collect data from outcomes measurement tools for ASGSF-funded therapies in December 2023. As therapy treatment comes to an end, this data will give an overall picture of the impact and adequacy of individual ASGSF-funded therapies.

ASGSF therapy applications are generally permitted to extend up to 12 months, allowing children and families to receive continuing therapy across financial years. The department will shortly be finalising business planning decisions on how its budget will be allocated for the next financial year. All decisions regarding the ASGSF are being made as part of these discussions. An announcement will be made as soon as possible.

The department wants to ensure that, where required, education, health and care (EHC) plan assessments are progressed promptly and, if needed, plans are issued as quickly as possible so that children and young people can access the support they need.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to assess whether children and young people have special educational needs that require an EHC plan. EHC plans must be issued within twenty weeks of the needs assessment commencing so that children and young people can access the support they need. In 2023, there were 138,200 initial requests for an EHC plan and 90,500 assessments took place. 50.3% of new EHC plans in 2023 were issued within twenty weeks.

The department knows that local authorities have seen an increase in the number of assessment requests and that more needs to be done to ensure that local areas deliver effective and timely services. This includes better communication with schools and families.

The department continues to monitor and work closely with local authorities that have issues with EHC plan timeliness. Where there are concerns about a local authority’s capacity to make the required improvements, we help the local authority to identify the barriers and put in place an effective recovery plan. This includes, where needed, securing specialist special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) adviser support to help identify the barriers to EHC plan process timeliness and put in place practical plans for recovery.

A Joint Area SEND inspection was carried out by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission between 11 to 15 December 2023 in Gloucestershire. Inspectors concluded the local area partnership’s arrangements led to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people and identified a number of recommendations including increasing timeliness and quality of EHC plans. Leaders in the local area have provided an improvement plan and an updated SEND strategic plan.

Officials and SEND advisors from both the department and NHS England meet regularly with Gloucestershire local area leaders from the local authority and integrated care board, parent representatives, education leaders and other partners to monitor progress against their improvement plan. As part of this work, there is also ongoing monitoring of Gloucestershire’s EHC plans, on their timeliness, quality and clearance of any backlog.

To assist the local area, the department has deployed a SEND advisor to offer support and advice. Some of the advisor’s work to date includes analysis of EHC plans data and trends, facilitation of best practice exchange from other regions, advice and guidance to enhance the quality of EHC plans.

Local authorities are responsible for allocating additional funding from their high needs budgets to mainstream schools for their pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The department is providing an increase of almost £1 billion for high needs budgets in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to £11.9 billion. Of that total, Gloucestershire County Council is being allocated a provisional funding amount of over £104.8 million in the 2025/26 financial year through the high needs national funding formula (NFF), which is an 8.3% increase per head of their 2 to 18 year old population, on their equivalent 2024/25 financial year NFF allocation.

Working with farmers and landowners is an important part of the Environment Agency’s Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy Roadmap up to 2026. A priority is to support farmers and land managers adapt their land management practices to be more resilient to the changing climate. The National Farmers Union and the Country Land and Business Association are both represented on the Flood Resilience Taskforce.

The Rural Flood Resilience Partnership unites six organisations including the Environment Agency, to support agricultural businesses and rural communities. The Partnership and its workplan was launched on the 23 September 2024. This details shared actions to look at how farming practices can enhance flood resilience in rural areas, alongside sustainable food production.

In addition, the Government’s ongoing investment in the environment will also support natural flood management measures – including measures that support soil health.

The British Horseracing Authority (BHA), British racing's governing and regulatory body, is responsible for the welfare of racehorses at British racecourses. The BHA works alongside the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare to make horseracing as safe as possible. Officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs continue to engage productively with these organisations on equine welfare and safety matters.

This Government is investing £2.4 billion over this year and next year to improve flood resilience by maintaining, repairing and building flood defences – benefitting both rural and urban communities.

The Environment Agency is currently working with partners on property flood resilience schemes to residential homes most regularly affected by flooding in Tewkesbury, including at Abbey Terrace.

To speed up scheme delivery and ensure the challenges facing businesses and rural and coastal communities are adequately taken into account, a consultation will be launched in the new year which will include a review of the formula.

The Government has also announced £50 million of additional investment into internal drainage boards and £60 million in payments to farmers impacted by last year’s severe weather through the Farming Recovery Fund.

The Department does not determine the locations at which electric vehicle chargepoints are installed. For those in public areas, local authorities are best placed to understand what charging infrastructure is needed and have a key role in planning and enabling the delivery of chargepoints, with particular focus on supporting those who do not have access to off-street parking. The £381m Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) fund includes capability (resource) funding for local authorities to secure dedicated in-house expertise to plan, procure and deliver local chargepoints.

The Government is committed to accelerating the roll-out of affordable charging infrastructure so that everyone, no matter where they live or work, can make the transition to an electric vehicle. As of February 2025, the Government and industry have supported the installation of 74,334 publicly available charging devices, up 35% on this time last year. There was particularly strong growth in rural areas last year, with chargepoint numbers increasing by 45% in 2024.

The £381m Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund will support the installation of at least 100,000 local chargepoints across the country. LEVI funding allocations factored in the proportion of residents that are in rural areas. This meant local authorities in rural areas were allocated additional funding compared to urban ones.

The Government works closely with the automotive industry to monitor the health of the second-hand electric vehicle (EV) market and improve consumer information about EVs and charging infrastructure.

The battery forms a large part of an EV’s value, providing information about battery health will therefore help consumers make informed decisions about second-hand EVs. The Government has worked with international partners at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to develop Global Technical Regulation No. 22. This requires EV manufacturers to provide easily accessible, accurate, and comparable information on the battery’s state of health. The Government is currently analysing options for the implementation of this regulation in the UK.

This Government recognises that dynamic transport infrastructure like the new Arle Court Transport Hub in Cheltenham is essential for helping people go about their daily lives. We have already awarded Gloucestershire nearly £4.2m capital funding for bus service improvements in 2025/26 and will make further funding announcements later this year.

Ambulance services in Gloucestershire and the South West are provided by the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, with responsibility for commissioning the services a matter for the local NHS Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (ICB). Specific local actions needed to reduce ambulance waiting times should be undertaken and agreed locally by National Health Service organisations in the best interests of the local population and patients.

At a national level, the Government and NHS England are committed to improving ambulance response times. The NHS 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance sets national priorities, which include improving accident and emergency waiting times and ambulance response times compared to 2024/25.

The Government has taken a number of difficult but necessary decisions on tax, welfare, and spending to fix the public finances.

One of the toughest decisions we took was to raise the rate of employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) from 13.8% to 15%, whilst reducing the per-employee threshold at which employers start to pay National Insurance (the Secondary Threshold) from £9,100 to £5,000.

The Government decided to protect the smallest businesses from these changes by increasing the Employment Allowance from £5,000 to £10,500. This means that next year, 865,000 employers will pay no NICs at all, and more than half of all employers will either gain or will see no change.

A Tax Information and Impact Note (TIIN) was published alongside the introduction of Bill containing the changes to employer NICs, setting out the impact of the policy.

Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) is a tax on car ownership from which electric vehicles are currently exempt. As announced by the previous Government at Autumn Statement 2022, from April 2025, electric and hybrid cars, vans and motorcycles will begin to pay VED alongside petrol and diesel vehicles.

The Policy Costings document published alongside Autumn Statement 2022 when the change was announced estimates the impact on electric vehicle take-up to be “negligible”.

The Government is committed to supporting the transition to Zero Emission Vehicles and announced a number of measures at Budget to support EV take-up. VED First Year Rates are changing from 2025-26, with higher rates for polluting hybrid, petrol and diesel vehicles. In addition the Government maintained incentives for the purchase of EVs within the Company Car Tax and Salary Sacrifice regimes, and extended the 100% First Year Allowances for businesses purchasing zero emission cars and installing chargepoint infrastructure.

Revenue from motoring taxes helps ensure we can continue to fund the vital public services and infrastructure that people and families across the UK expect.

The Government published information about the reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief at www.gov.uk/government/publications/agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief-reforms.

It is expected that up to around 2,000 estates will be affected by the changes to APR and BPR in 2026-27, with around half of those being claims that involve AIM shares. Almost three-quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief (including those claiming agricultural property relief and business property relief together) are expected to be unaffected by these reforms.

The UK has robust domestic food production, and these reforms will only affect a small number of estates. The small number of landowners affected will not necessarily need to sell the land and, if they choose to, then it does not necessarily mean the land would stop being used for food production. At Autumn Budget 2024, the Government announced the largest ever investment in sustainable food production in England.

In accordance with standard practice, a tax information and impact note will be published alongside the draft legislation before the relevant Finance Bill.

The 2025-26 final police funding settlement provides funding of up to £19.6 billion for the policing system in England and Wales. This is an overall increase of up to £1.1 billion when compared to the 2024-25 settlement and represents a 6% cash terms increase and 3.5% real terms increase in funding.

It is the responsibility of locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) and Chief Constables to set a balanced budget and to publish information to enable the local public to assess the performance of the police force.

PCCs in consultation with the Chief Constable are responsible for identifying and agreeing a medium-term financial strategy which includes funding and spending plans for both revenue and capital. This strategy should have regard to affordability and take into account multiple years, the inter-dependencies of revenue budgets and capital investments, the role of reserves and the consideration of risks.

The Home Office works closely with the policing sector to monitor force financial pressures, which includes reviewing the published Medium Term Financial Plans.

The Government condemns the exploitation of international care workers by rogue employers in the adult social care sector and continues to take robust action against this unscrupulous behaviour.

If an individual is in danger or at risk of exploitation, we urge them to come forward so we can work with the police or other law enforcement bodies, including the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), to support them through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).

The enforcement bodies are currently working together to investigate a range of allegations about the adult care sector. The evidence ranges from labour market offences such as charging for work finding fees and non-payment of National Minimum Wage to the higher level of exploitative abuses such as debt bondage and modern slavery.

We have recently implemented prohibitions on Skilled Worker sponsors recouping sponsorship costs from those they sponsor, and those doing so now risk losing their licence. We also intend to ban any employer who flouts employment laws from acting as a sponsor in the future.

Tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB) is a top priority for this Government and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission.

The Government recently announced Respect Orders which will be introduced through the Crime and Policing Bill. Respect Orders can be applied for by the police and local councils and are issued by the courts. They will enable courts to place wide-ranging restrictions on the behaviour of the most persistent and disruptive ASB offenders. They will include a power of arrest for any suspected breach, meaning officers can take action quickly to disrupt ongoing ASB. Breach will be a criminal offence, which is heard in the criminal courts with a wide range of sentencing options, including community orders, unlimited fines and, for the most severe cases, up to two years’ imprisonment.

We will also put thousands of new neighbourhood police and community support officers into local communities, so residents know who to turn to when things go wrong.

Where the Government is involved in the planning of large scale sporting events (like the commonwealth games 2022), there is ongoing engagement with local police to ensure risks are identified and addressed in the planning and delivery of the event. The local Safety Advisory Group (SAG) co-ordinated by the Local Authority provides advice and guidance on specific areas of responsibility for organisers and other agencies involved in organising events.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has robust policies in place to safely manage asbestos in accordance with relevant legislation and Health and Safety Executive guidance.

Where asbestos is being remediated and/ or removed from MOD sites, we notify local residents in accordance with the appropriate legislation.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is committed to the health and safety of our people and we have robust policies in place to safely manage asbestos in Defence in accordance with relevant legislation and Health and Safety Executive guidance. MOD complies with its legal obligation not to construct any new infrastructure containing asbestos and to maintain a risk register for legacy asbestos, treating it as appropriate.

In 2019 routine sampling identified asbestos within buildings on the Ashchurch site. The MOD immediately implemented measures and controls to reduce exposure risk and provide additional safeguards on site. Significant amounts of asbestos have now been removed and work continues to ensure any remaining asbestos is removed or made safe.

The UK has a moral obligation to assist our Afghan friends and allies who served for, with or alongside our Armed Forces in support of UK objectives in Afghanistan. We will honour that moral duty.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) offers a range of packages for those relocated under the ARAP upon their arrival. This includes transitional accommodation on the Defence Estate, orientation and cultural awareness briefings, safeguarding, and English language support, as well as help to register to access mainstream services (such as the NHS, education, employment, and universal credit). Working with Local Authorities and other Government Departments, the MOD has also supported families in moving into settled accommodation.

This Government is fully committed to delivering on the pledge to those in Afghanistan who are eligible to relocate and resettle, and we continue to welcome these Afghans and their families to the UK through our Afghan resettlement schemes. This is why, as announced by the Secretary of State for Defence on 18 December 2024, we are launching the Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP), which will draw together a single pipeline for Afghan resettlement, working cross-Government, to deliver greater efficiency and better outcomes.

Further information on the resettlement offer under the ARP can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/afghan-resettlement-programme

The Government is committed to ensuring that the 1.5 million homes we will build over the course of this parliament will be high quality, well designed and sustainable.

Future standards, to be introduced this year, will set our new homes and buildings on a path that moves away from relying on volatile fossil fuels and ensures they are fit for a net zero future. These homes will be future proofed with low carbon heating and high levels of energy efficiency. No further energy efficiency retrofit work will be necessary to enable them to become zero-carbon over time as the electricity grid continues to decarbonise.

This commitment will help put the UK back on track to meeting its climate goals, all while cutting bills, boosting economic growth and delivering energy independence with clean power by 2030.

Garden Communities are locally-led new settlements or urban extensions. The Garden Communities programme provides support to progress long-term housing projects from their earliest stages. It enables local authorities to recruit specialist staff, undertake the required planning and receive advice and support from the housing delivery body, Homes England. The government will keep the programme under review.