Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will take steps to (a) update guidance on the use of Conformité Européenne marking for construction products and (b) expand testing and certification capacity in the UK.

Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

(a) The guidance pages on the use of CE marking for construction products are regularly updated. They were most recently updated on 26^th of February 2025. You can find the guidance here:

Construction Products Regulation in Great Britain - GOV.UK

Construction Products Regulation in Northern Ireland - GOV.UK

(b)The Construction Products Reform Green Paper (published on 26 February 2025) sets out proposals for system wide reform of the construction products regime, including expanding testing and certification capacity in the UK. Access to this capacity is critical to growth and meeting our commitment to deliver 1.5 million homes during this parliament. Measures to improve conformity assessment capacity include consideration of whether the government should have the ability to recognise conformity assessment activity undertaken outside of the UK, and supporting skills development of conformity assessment bodies (for example, through government-backed training schemes).

The green paper also sets out our ambition to support and encourage innovation in the built environment, and seeks views on the potential to expand public testing capacity.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on what the average fine was for parents who had failed to secure their child’s regular attendance at school under section 444(1) of the Education Act 1996 in the latest period for which data is available.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Information held on the average values of fines for parents who had failed to secure their child’s attendance at school will be held by local authorities.

The amount payable was £60 if paid within 21 days of receipt, rising to £120 if paid between 22 and 28 days. From August 2024, the fine for school absences increased to £80 if paid within 21 days or £160 if paid within 28 days. In the case of repeated fines, if a parent receives a second fine for the same child within any three-year period, this will be charged at the higher rate of £160.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of fines in tackling levels of attendance at schools.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Tackling absence is at the heart of the government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. If children are not in school, it does not matter how effective or well-supported teaching and learning is, they will not benefit. Thanks to the hard work of the sector there has been progress, but we remain a long way off pre-pandemic levels.

The department’s statutory attendance guidance, ‘Working together to improve school attendance’, promotes a support-first model. The guidance is clear that all partners should always work together to understand and remove the barriers to attendance. However, where that support is not successful, not appropriate (for example for term-time holidays), or not engaged with, the law protects pupils’ right to an education. The guidance outlines a role for legal intervention based on effective practice within the sector.

The vast majority of penalty notices are issued due to unauthorised family holidays. However, usage has been uneven across the country, with 26 out of 153 local authorities accounting for half of all penalty notices issued in 2023/2024. The new National Framework for Penalty Notices, introduced in August 2024, is designed to create consistency in that area by establishing a common threshold at which a penalty notice must be considered. In a public consultation in 2022, 71% of local authority employees and 59% of school and academy trust employees and governors or trustees strongly or somewhat agreed with the proposed national thresholds which were subsequently adopted within the framework.

The statistical release on parental responsibility measures, which includes information on the number of penalty notices issued for unauthorised absence, can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/parental-responsibility-measures.

Found: James Wild NC1 To move the following Clause— “Review of impact of section 1 on recipients of the full

Found: Withdrawn after debate_NC1 James Wild Mel Stride Gareth Davies Blake Stephenson Mark Garnier .

Found: Not called_NC5 James Wild .

Found: Letter dated 28/02/2025 from James Murray MP to Gareth Davies MP and James Wild MP regarding questions