Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what is the minimum acceptable distance between a leachate treatment plant and housing developments.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
National planning policy is clear that local plans and decisions should prevent new and existing development from contributing to, being put at unacceptable risk from, or being adversely affected by, unacceptable levels of soil, air, water or noise pollution.
Owners of industrial, trade and business premises are expected to use the best practicable means available to reduce odours, effluvia and other potential sources of statutory nuisance emanating from their place of work in the first place. If this is not happening, then local authorities have powers through the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to investigate and issue abatement notices to stop the problem from re-occurring if they determine a statutory nuisance exists.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of waiting times for gynaecological care and treatment in (a) the North East and (b) England as of 21 February 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care outlines how the National Health Service will bring down waiting times across all elective services. The plan does not prioritise specialties, but the NHS continues to focus on reducing the longest waits, providing high levels of support and scrutiny, targeted at the trusts which have the highest number of patients waiting the longest for elective treatment.
To support this plan and tackle waiting lists, including those in gynaecology, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to drive up and protect elective activity. We are also increasing capacity, including for gynaecological surgery, through our surgical hubs, delivered by the Getting It Right First Time ‘High Volume Low Complexity’ programme.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
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 reduce waiting times for a hysterectomy in (a) County Durham and (b) England.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care outlines how the National Health Service will bring down waiting times across all elective services. The plan does not prioritise specialties or certain interventions, but the NHS continues to focus on reducing the longest waiting times and providing high levels of support and scrutiny, targeted at the trusts which have the highest number of patients waiting the longest time, for elective treatment.
To support this plan and tackle waiting lists, including those in gynaecology, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to drive up and protect elective activity. We are also increasing capacity, including for gynaecological surgery, through our surgical hubs, delivered by the Getting It Right First Time’s High Volume Low Complexity programme.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the time taken to process (a) online and (b) paper probate applications.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS are focused on increasing outputs to reduce overall timeliness on all types of applications and the average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is 13 weeks during July to September 2023.
During the same period the average mean length of time take for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required is (a) 10.1 weeks digital and (b) 21.8 weeks paper.
The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow with higher levels of receipts during January to September 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
HMCTS has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.
As a result, the number of grants issued for recent months has been at record levels, with over 15,500 more grants issued than applications received during the last four months (September to December) using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).
Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to September 2023.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of when the processing time of probate applications will be reduced to less than 16 weeks.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS are focused on increasing outputs to reduce overall timeliness on all types of applications and the average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is 13 weeks during July to September 2023.
During the same period the average mean length of time take for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required is (a) 10.1 weeks digital and (b) 21.8 weeks paper.
The probate service received record levels of applications during 2022 and this has continued to grow with higher levels of receipts during January to September 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
HMCTS has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.
As a result, the number of grants issued for recent months has been at record levels, with over 15,500 more grants issued than applications received during the last four months (September to December) using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).
Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to September 2023.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, whether he has had discussions with the Northern Ireland Executive on trends in the level of childcare funding in Northern Ireland.
Answered by Steve Baker - Minister of State (Northern Ireland Office)
I welcome the recent debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly on childcare and the cross-party support for a childcare strategy to be delivered.
Whilst childcare in Northern Ireland is devolved, the UK Government is keen to see this work progressed so that parents are able to balance childcare alongside their work. Northern Ireland has already received the Barnett consequentials of childcare funding in England.
The UK Government has provided the NI Executive with a significant £3.3 billion package, including money to stabilise, which will support progress for key services.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 December 2023 to Question 5663 on Garth Prison: Education, how (a) many hours of teaching time were lost and (b) much money was recovered from education providers as a result of prison education classes not going ahead in HMP (i) Garth, (ii) Bristol, (iii) Pentonville and (iv) Ranby during the second quarter of the 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We have introduced robust contractual levers into the current education contract which has seen a decrease in the teaching time lost through the education provider. The introduction at site level of Heads of Education, Skills and Work will increase the focus on ensure operational staff are able to ensure learners arrive in education.
The table below shows the number of planned learning hours lost in the second quarter of 2023-24 due teacher vacancy or sickness (Ed), or for operational reasons (Op), at HMP Bristol, HMP Garth, HMP Pentonville and HMP Ranby.
Learning hours lost, 1 July – 30 September 2023
HMP | Hours lost (Ed) | Hours lost (Op) |
Bristol | 263 | 134 |
Garth | 183 | 140 |
Pentonville | 53 | 507 |
Ranby | 8 | 376 |
Total | 507 | 1157 |
*These are preliminary data and have not yet been reconciled with the provider
In total, 507 hours of teaching were lost owing to a failure by the provider to deliver against the commissioned provision. £60,047 has been recovered from the providers. The cost of hours lost for operational reasons is not recoverable from the provider.