Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the average amount of European Structural Investment Funding was per year for the period 2014-20; and what the projected average Shared Prosperity Fund funding will be per year.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
The UK Partnership Agreement 2019 states that the total European Structural and Investment Funds allocated to the UK for the 2014-2020 programme was €16.4 billion. This includes €11 billion for the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF), which are known collectively as ‘Structural Funds’.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is the domestic successor to the EU Structural Fund programme. We will ramp up funding so that total domestic UK-wide funding will at least match EU receipts. Funding profiles will be confirmed at the next Spending Review.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what his timetable is for (a) announcing (i) eligibility criteria and (ii) allocations to local authorities for and (b) disbursing funding from the Hardship Fund announced in the Budget 2020.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Government will provide English councils with £500 million to support financially vulnerable residents, and expects that most of the funding will be used to provide additional council tax relief.
Further guidance is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/council-tax-covid-19-hardship-fund-2020-to-2021-guidance .
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to Age UK's publication entitled Home Truths, published January 2020, what plans he has to support older people in the private rented sector in the upcoming renters' reform Bill.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
As announced in the Queen’s Speech, the Government plans to introduce a package of reforms to deliver a better deal for renters and a fairer and more effective rental market. The Renters’ Reform Bill will enhance renters’ security and improve protections for short-term tenants by abolishing ‘no-fault’ evictions. This will include repealing Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 and represents a generational change in the law that governs private renting.
Our recent consultation, ‘A New Deal for Renting: Resetting the balance of rights and responsibilities between landlords and tenants’ sought views from across the private and social rented sectors on how the new system should operate, in order to ensure that we get the details right?and?create?a new framework which works for everyone. We welcome the consultation response submitted by Age UK, which highlights the experience of a range of tenants who rent their homes in the private rented sector, including older people. Almost 20,000 responses to the consultation were received and these are being carefully considered to help inform the Renters’ Reform Bill.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing the Future Homes Standard on energy efficiency before 2025.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government is fully committed to meeting its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and recognises the important contribution that the energy efficiency of buildings has to make in meeting it.
We have committed to introduce a Future Homes Standard from 2025 which means that new homes will be fit for the future, with low carbon heating and lower energy use through high levels of energy efficiency.
As a stepping stone to the Future Homes Standard, we have consulted on a meaningful and achievable increase to the energy efficiency standards for new homes to be introduced through the Building Regulations in 2020, with a further strengthening by 2025. The consultation responses we have received will be considered carefully and a Government response will be published in due course.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the net carbon footprint of homes built under the Future Homes Standard.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government is fully committed to meeting its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and recognises the important contribution that the energy efficiency of buildings has to make in meeting it. We have committed to introduce a Future Homes Standard from 2025 which means that new homes will be fit for the future, with low carbon heating and lower energy use through high levels of energy efficiency.
In October 2019 we published a consultation on the Future Homes Standard which proposed that new homes built to the Future Homes Standard from 2025 should have carbon dioxide emissions 75-80 per cent lower than those built to current building regulations standards. The Future Homes Standard consultation closed on 7 February 2020. The responses we have received will be considered carefully and a Government response will be published in due course.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will extend the Community Housing Fund for a further five years.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Community Housing Fund is currently scheduled to close in March 2020. Ministers are considering all budgets in the round and allocations for 2020/21 will be confirmed at Main Estimates in the Spring. Allocations for future years will be considered at the forthcoming Budget and Spending Review.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the implementation of the agent of change planning principle at local authority level; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Esther McVey - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The agent of change principle was introduced relatively recently, through revisions made to the National Planning Policy Framework in 2018. It makes clear that applicants for planning permission should provide suitable mitigation where the operation of an existing business or community facility could have a significant adverse effect on development proposed nearby. The implementation of planning policy is, in the first instance, a matter for local planning authorities through their development management and monitoring arrangements.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the press release of 22 February 2019 entitled £9.8 million fund to confront knife and gang crime culture, how many families in each project area have been assisted by the fund; and what support they have received.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
The Troubled Families Programme is a £920 million programme to help up to 400,000 families with multiple and complex needs, including those at risk of becoming involved in crime and serious violence. The Supporting Families Against Youth Crime Fund has provided a further £9.8 million to help 21 places further enhance how their local Troubled Families Programme helps tackle youth violence and gangs. Each of the projects are designed to respond directly to the needs of their community and so the support provided to families varies in each local area. They include diversionary activities such as boxing and residential courses, resilience building, out of hours mentors, conflict resolution and whole family counselling. Local areas awarded funding will provide monitoring data later this year.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what specific projects his Department is leading on to (a) support complex families with children at risk of involvement in crime and (b) build safer communities with a greater resilience to serious and organised crime.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
My Department leads on the national Troubled Families Programme, which aims to find better ways of working with complex families with multiple high-cost problems. £920 million has been committed to the programme from 2015 - 2020. It targets families at risk of poor outcomes for early support. This can include families already involved in crime or anti-social behaviour; those where children are not attending school regularly; or where children are in need of help. I also recently announced a new £5 million Supporting Families Against Youth Crime Fund to help eligible local authorities in England who are part of the Troubled Families Programme increase their focus on tackling youth crime and gangs.
Asked by: Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what information his Department holds on how many people have died while sleeping rough in each of the last seven years; and what steps the Government is taking to help prevent people from becoming seriously ill or dying while sleeping rough.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why this Government has committed to halving rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminating it altogether by 2027.
The newly formed Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce will drive forward the implementation of a cross-Government strategy to achieve this.
At Autumn Budget 2017, we announced £28 million of funding to pilot the Housing First approach for some of the country’s most entrenched rough sleepers. This funding forms part of the £1 billion that the Government has allocated until 2020 to prevent and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping.