Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many state-funded school playing pitches have been sold in each of the last five years.

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

As part of the department’s transparency data, a register of decisions to dispose of school playing field land is published on GOV.UK: www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-land-decisions-about-disposals.

Playing field land is defined as land in the open air which is provided for the purposes of physical education or recreation.

85 applications were given consent to dispose of playing field land between 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2023 (12 in 2019, 21 in 2020, 14 in 2021, 20 in 2022 and 18 in 2023). The majority of those were disposals by way of freehold sale, but the figures also include appropriation of playing field land to another local authority use, such as, social housing or highways, or the grant or surrender of a lease of more than 30 years.

18 applications were given consent to dispose of playing field land between 1 January and 31 October 2024. The department anticipates the cases will be added to the published list on GOV.UK by the end of January 2025.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to ensure that the cost of firearms licensing does not reduce resources available for other operational policing.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

Firearms licensing fees have not been increased since 2015 and are now significantly less than the cost of the service provided by the police.

The Government’s Manifesto includes a commitment to move to full cost recovery for firearms licensing fees, and moving to full cost recovery will help protect the public by providing police forces with the funding they need to properly resource and train their firearms licensing teams, and to carry out thorough checks and continuous assessment of the suitability of someone to possess a lethal firearm.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how many couples claimed shared parental pay in each of the last five years.

Answered by Justin Madders - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)

Information provided by employers to HMRC show the number of individuals in receipt of Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP). This data provides a broad indication of SPL take-up but does not include anyone taking unpaid Shared Parental Leave.

Table 1: Individuals in receipt of ShPP by gender, 2019/20 to 2023/24 (the latest year for which full year data is available)

1. Data is collected using HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) and is subject to revision.
2. Figures are rounded to the nearest hundred.
3. Figures are based on the total number of individuals in a given year, irrespective of when the payment first started. Some individuals will be counted across two years.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many local authority owned leisure facilities have been sold in each of the last five years.

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

Since 2019, 89 Health and Fitness facilities owned by Local Authorities have closed. Over the same period, 83 Health and Fitness facilities have opened.

The breakdown for closures per year is as follows:

2019: 23

2020: 16

2021: 15

2022: 16

2023: 11

2024: 2 (as of end of August 2024)

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