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Written Question
Rents: Arrears
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of increases in the cost of living on the number of households in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England that have fallen into rent arrears with (i) private landlords and (ii) social housing providers.

Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

The English Housing Survey 2022 to 2023 Headline report provides data on the percentage of private and social renters in rent arrears. Further information can be found at the following link.

Further breakdowns of headline measures will be published next summer.


Written Question
Mental Health Services
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to improve access to mental health services in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 to expand these services for adults, children and young people in England, including in Coventry North East constituency, Coventry and the West Midlands.

On top of this we provided an extra £500 million in 2021/22 to accelerate our expansion plans and address waiting times for mental health services, give more people the mental health support they need, and invest in the National Health Service workforce.


Written Question
Social Security Benefits: Rents
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of benefit claimants are in rent arrears in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England; and what steps his Department is taking to help support benefit claimants who are in rent arrears.

Answered by Mims Davies - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The information requested is not held by the Department. For those UC claimants struggling with their single monthly rent payment, payment of housing costs can be made direct to landlords.

For 2022/23 we are projected to have spent almost £30 billion to support renters with their housing costs.

As announced in the Autumn Statement on 22 November, Local Housing Allowance rates will be increased from April 2024 to the 30th percentile of local market rents at a cost of £1.2 billion. This will mean 1.6 million private renters in receipt of Housing Benefit or Universal Credit (UC) will gain on average around £800 a year in additional help towards their rental costs in 2024-25.

For those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs and need further support Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. Since 2011 the Government has provided nearly £1.7 billion in DHP funding to local authorities.


Written Question
Primary Health Care
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to improve patient access to primary care in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

We recognise that despite the hard work of general practice teams, some patients are still struggling to access care in a timely way. That is why we have published our Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care. The plan has two central ambitions to improve access both nationally and in Coventry and West Midlands, namely to tackle the 8am rush and reduce the number of people struggling to contact their practice, and for patients to know on the day they contact their practice how their request will be managed.

We will achieve this by modernising telephone systems which can help practices to better match their capacity to patient demand, backed by £240 million in retargeted funding. All practices have now signed up to transition to new digital systems. The plan will empower patients to do more themselves, cutting bureaucracy for general practitioners and building capacity to deliver more appointments. We have invested £1.5 billion and created an additional 50 million general practice appointments by increasing and diversifying the workforce.


Written Question
Cancer: Waiting Lists
Tuesday 5th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to improve waiting times for cancer treatment in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Reducing cancer treatment waiting times is a priority for this Government. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care. The Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.

In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years to support delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity for cancer.

Additionally, the Government recently published the Major Conditions Strategy Case for Change and Our Strategic Framework on 14 August 2023 which sets out our approach to making the choices over the next 5 years that will deliver the most value in facing the health challenges of today and of the decades ahead, including for cancer.


Written Question
Fuel Poverty
Monday 4th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what recent estimate her Department has made of the proportion of households in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England that spent more than 10% of their income on energy costs in each of the last three years.

Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury

The latest official Fuel Poverty Statistics for England were published in February 2023 on gov.uk here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fuel-poverty-statistics#2022-Statistics

In addition to reporting against the official fuel poverty metric for England, these statistics included an affordability measure of the number of households required to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on domestic energy. These can be found in Annex D: Affordability measures for England, of the annual report.

Affordability measure estimates are not held at sub-national level. Figures are available at sub-national level for fuel poverty under the Low-income Low energy efficiency (LILEE) metric, on gov.uk here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/sub-regional-fuel-poverty-data-2023-2021-data


Written Question
Broadband
Monday 4th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of households in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England that do not have (i) broadband and (ii) mobile internet access.

Answered by John Whittingdale

Ofcom collects coverage data as part of its reporting requirements, most recently published in its Connected Nations summer update, with data for the period to April 2023. Ofcom provides coverage data for premises, and we are unable to break this down between households and other premises.

Ofcom estimates that around 30,000 premises in the UK (0.1%) and 13,000 premises in England (less than 0.1%) lack access to either a fixed broadband network with ‘decent broadband’ (at least 10 Mbit/s download and 1 Mbit/s upload speed) or good indoor 4G coverage.

In the constituency of Coventry North East, 381 premises lack access to either a fixed broadband network with ‘decent broadband’ (at least 10 Mbit/s download and 1 Mbit/s upload speed). For the Coventry City Council area that figure is 1,137. Ofcom does not publish aggregated data for the region of the West Midlands, however more data can be found in Ofcom’s Connected Nations reports.

In respect of mobile coverage, Ofcom reports that 132,383 premises across England do not have indoor 4G mobile coverage from any MNO. This falls to 11,222 premises for 4G outdoor coverage. With 2G and 3G coverage added in, 9,622 premises do not have indoor data coverage from any MNO, falling to 1,127 premises without outdoor data coverage. Unfortunately, Ofcom data does not enable us to make an assessment of the number of premises in the West Midlands, the Coventry North East constituency, or the Coventry local authority area that do not have coverage from any mobile network operator.


Written Question
General Practitioners: Standards
Monday 4th December 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the average waiting times for GP appointments in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last three years.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Information on the approximate length of time between appointments being booked and taking place is not held at constituency or city level. The following table shows the percentage of appointments taking place on the same day as booking and within two weeks of booking for England and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Midlands region in each of the last three years:

Appointments - 12 months from November to October

National - Percentage of appointments occuring on the same day of booking

ONS Midlands Region - Percentage of appointments occuring on the same day of booking

National - Appointments occuring within two weeks of booking

ONS Midlands Region - Appointments occuring within two weeks of booking

November 2020 - October 2021

45.2%

47.2%

88.6%

88.7%

November 2021 - October 2022

43.8%

45.8%

85.1%

85.3%

November 2022 - October 2023

43.1%

44.7%

82.5%

82.6%


Written Question
Reading: Boys
Thursday 26th October 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to encourage boys to read more books.

Answered by Nick Gibb

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.


Written Question
Sports: Coventry
Wednesday 25th October 2023

Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what funding her Department allocated to projects to support grassroots sports facilities in Coventry in each of the last five years.

Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

Over the last five years, DCMS has provided over £1.26m of funding to support grassroots sports facilities in Coventry, to improve access and increase participation.

Over £1.26m has been invested as part of the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme, via the Football Foundation, to seven clubs/organisations (The Futures Trust, Firefighters Jfc, CM Sports FC, Coventry Saracens Junior FC, Coventry Copsewood Junior FC, Coventrians RFC, Firefighters Jfc). This funding went towards a range of improvements - from a new full-sized third generation artificial grass pitch to new goalposts and changing rooms.

Spencer Park in Coventry has also received funding through the Park Tennis Court Renovation programme. £78,000 has been used to improve the public tennis courts there.