Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether the Government is taking steps to prevent (a) builders, (b) management companies appointed by builders and (c) the legal advisers to such individuals charging disproportionately large amounts of money for (i) notice fees and (ii) the provision of draft deeds of covenant to be entered into by purchasers; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nigel Adams
The Government is committed to promoting fairness and transparency for leaseholders and freeholders and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service.
On 1 April, we published the response to our call for evidence on protecting consumers in the letting and managing agent market. Proposals include establishing a Working Group to consider how fees such as service charges should be presented to consumers and to explore the best means to challenge fees which are unjustified. We will also ask the Working Group to look into those fees and charges that go beyond service charges, but can impact both leaseholders and freeholders, and consider under what circumstances they are justified, and if they should be capped or banned. This includes the use of restrictive covenants, leasehold restrictions, administration charges and other charges placed on properties.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2017 to Question HL3576, what steps his Department is taking to strengthen families.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
This Government wants to fix the broken housing market to help more ordinary working families buy an affordable home and to give people the security they need to be able to plan for the future. Fundamentally, this means building many more houses in the places that people want to live and getting a fairer deal for renters.
At the heart of this Government's policy on housing is our commitment to help hard working families who are just about managing to get by, and to ensure that the housing market is fairer for those who don't own their own home.
My Department also oversees the Troubled Families Programme which supports early intervention to prevent family breakdown. We work closely with other Government departments to help families overcome their challenges and stabilise their lives, for example, our joint work with Department for Work and Pensions on the Improving Lives agenda.
The programme supports families with multiple problems, including for example those affected by domestic abuse, parental conflict, drug, alcohol or mental health problems, and where children are in need of help. Family keyworkers take a whole family integrated approach across multiple services and provide a co-ordinated package of support. Together this approach can lead to greater family stability and help prevent the need for children to enter care. We have committed £920 million to the programme from 2015 – 2020.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to which legislation his Department has applied the Family Test, published in August 2014.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
The Government is committed to supporting families. To achieve this, in 2014 we introduced the Family Test, which aims to ensure that impacts on family relationships and functioning are recognised early on during the process of policy development and help inform the policy decisions made by Minsters. The Family Test was not designed to be a ‘tick-box’ exercise, and as such there is no requirement for departments to publish the results of assessments made under the Family Test.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department plans to take to promote the construction of modern, high-quality prefabricated housing.
Answered by Lord Barwell
Government wants to see a significant increase in the number of new homes being built of all types and tenures.
To increase housing supply, we need a diversified housing market where all firms embrace innovation to build homes more quickly and deliver a better product to the consumer.
The use of modern methods of construction, including offsite techniques, has the potential to improve productivity and speed up the supply of high-quality, high-performance homes.
We are encouraging modern methods of construction through our housing and planning programmes including our Affordable Homes 2016-21, Build to Rent and Housing Zones programmes and through our National Planning Practice Guidance.
In October the Secretary of State launched the £3 billion Home Building Fund, which aims to deliver 225,000 homes. £1 billion of this fund will contribute to projects that will directly deliver housing in this Parliament, increasing supply by providing support to builders using modern methods of construction, in addition to custom builders, small and medium-sized builders and new entrants to the market.
We will also continue to promote the Build Offsite Property Assurance Scheme (www.bopas.org), which seeks to provide assurance to mortgage lenders about the quality and durability of offsite systems.
We will announce further measures in the Housing White Paper.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will take steps to ensure that staff in his Department receive religious literacy training.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
Civil Service Learning, the main training portal for civil servants, has a broad range of diversity and inclusion learning, which is available to all civil servants. There is also a two day course covering both Abrahamic and Dharmic religions for officials who need a more in depth understanding to carry out their role.
DCLG officials have had discussions with the Commission on Religion and Belief in Public Life (CORAB) about their call for greater religious literacy in every section of society. The Government is aware of the recent evidence sessions on religious literacy held by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Education and will carefully consider the findings of the Group's report when it is published.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps the Government is taking to improve the timely delivery of a local plan in areas where a local authority has not produced such a plan.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
The Government strongly encourages all areas to get up-to-date Local Plans in place. Although we have supported all authorities in plan-making, and recently seen significant positive plan-making progress, there is more that we can do to ensure comprehensive Local Plan coverage.
The Government’s Productivity Plan, published on 10 July, outlined the Government’s commitment to ensuring that Plans are put in place and to bringing forward measures to improve the plan-making process. We intend to set out shortly in a statement how we will take these measures forward, engaging closely with the sector in doing so to ensure that any reforms build upon recent positive progress on plan-making.
I would openly encourage all areas to put renewed effort into plan-making as Local Plans are the best way of working with the community to provide certainty as to what development is appropriate and where.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans his Department has for future continuous assessment of the Troubled Families initiative.
Answered by Greg Clark
The Troubled Families initiative aims to turn families around. This means children are back in school for three consecutive terms and there has been significant reductions in youth crime and anti-social behaviour; or an adult in the family is back in work for at least three months. The first Troubled Families Programme is on track to achieve its goal to turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families across England by May 2015. As of February 2015, over 105,000 families had been turned around. Final results will be published shortly.
The first programme has been subject to an independent national evaluation carried out by a consortium of research organisations, led by Ecorys UK Ltd and comprising Ipsos MORI, The National Institute for Economic and Social Research, Bryson Purdon Research and Clarissa White Research. The evaluation is assessing the impact, process and cost benefit of the programme. In July 2014, an initial report on the characteristics and problems experienced by families in the programme was published titled Understanding Troubled Families. The full final evaluation report is due later this summer.
The new expanded Troubled Families Programme aims to help up to 400,000 additional families achieve significant and sustainable change. It was rolled out nationally in April 2015 and an evaluation of this programme has already begun, delivered by the Office of National Statistics, Ipsos MORI and The Stationary Office. This will build on the first programme's assessments of impact and cost benefit, alongside a programme of qualitative research with local authorities and families to understand if and how services have adapted to work more effectively with families and those families' experiences of services.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Troubled Families initiative to date; and who conducted that assessment.
Answered by Greg Clark
The Troubled Families initiative aims to turn families around. This means children are back in school for three consecutive terms and there has been significant reductions in youth crime and anti-social behaviour; or an adult in the family is back in work for at least three months. The first Troubled Families Programme is on track to achieve its goal to turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families across England by May 2015. As of February 2015, over 105,000 families had been turned around. Final results will be published shortly.
The first programme has been subject to an independent national evaluation carried out by a consortium of research organisations, led by Ecorys UK Ltd and comprising Ipsos MORI, The National Institute for Economic and Social Research, Bryson Purdon Research and Clarissa White Research. The evaluation is assessing the impact, process and cost benefit of the programme. In July 2014, an initial report on the characteristics and problems experienced by families in the programme was published titled Understanding Troubled Families. The full final evaluation report is due later this summer.
The new expanded Troubled Families Programme aims to help up to 400,000 additional families achieve significant and sustainable change. It was rolled out nationally in April 2015 and an evaluation of this programme has already begun, delivered by the Office of National Statistics, Ipsos MORI and The Stationary Office. This will build on the first programme's assessments of impact and cost benefit, alongside a programme of qualitative research with local authorities and families to understand if and how services have adapted to work more effectively with families and those families' experiences of services.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what criteria his Department uses to assess the effectiveness of the Troubled Families initiative in individual local authority areas.
Answered by Greg Clark
The Troubled Families initiative aims to turn families around. This means children are back in school for three consecutive terms and there has been significant reductions in youth crime and anti-social behaviour; or an adult in the family is back in work for at least three months. The first Troubled Families Programme is on track to achieve its goal to turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families across England by May 2015. As of February 2015, over 105,000 families had been turned around. Final results will be published shortly.
The first programme has been subject to an independent national evaluation carried out by a consortium of research organisations, led by Ecorys UK Ltd and comprising Ipsos MORI, The National Institute for Economic and Social Research, Bryson Purdon Research and Clarissa White Research. The evaluation is assessing the impact, process and cost benefit of the programme. In July 2014, an initial report on the characteristics and problems experienced by families in the programme was published titled Understanding Troubled Families. The full final evaluation report is due later this summer.
The new expanded Troubled Families Programme aims to help up to 400,000 additional families achieve significant and sustainable change. It was rolled out nationally in April 2015 and an evaluation of this programme has already begun, delivered by the Office of National Statistics, Ipsos MORI and The Stationary Office. This will build on the first programme's assessments of impact and cost benefit, alongside a programme of qualitative research with local authorities and families to understand if and how services have adapted to work more effectively with families and those families' experiences of services.
Asked by: Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, on what basis additional funding for the Troubled Families initiative will be allocated to local authority areas.
Answered by Greg Clark
Upper tier local authorities are offered funding as part of the Troubled Families Programme on the basis of the number of families eligible for the programme within their area.