Natasha Irons

We are committed to providing support for grassroots clubs who provide access and opportunities to participate in sport and physical activity. Bowls has a unique and important role to play in tackling loneliness through supporting people to have the social connections they need and in driving positive public health outcomes.

Our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England has a long-term partnership with the Bowls Development Alliance. It has awarded them over £1.8m (since 2022) in investment and funding. Sport England also provides free resources and support to grassroots sports clubs and volunteers through its Buddle tool. Furthermore, Sport England’s Movement Fund also offers crowdfunding pledges, grants and resources to improve physical activity opportunities for the people and communities who need it the most which includes the refurbishment or upgrading facilities.

We are committed to providing support for grassroots clubs who provide access and opportunities to participate in sport and physical activity. Bowls has a unique and important role to play in tackling loneliness through supporting people to have the social connections they need and in driving positive public health outcomes.

Our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England has a long-term partnership with the Bowls Development Alliance. It has awarded them over £1.8m (since 2022) in investment and funding. Sport England also provides free resources and support to grassroots sports clubs and volunteers through its Buddle tool. Furthermore, Sport England’s Movement Fund also offers crowdfunding pledges, grants and resources to improve physical activity opportunities for the people and communities who need it the most which includes the refurbishment or upgrading facilities.

This Government fully recognises the importance of youth services to live safe and healthy lives, and the positive impact youth services can have on young people, including in educational settings.

That is why we are co-producing a new National Youth Strategy. The Strategy will better coordinate youth services and policy at a local, regional and national level, moving away from siloed working - ensuring we are better coordinated and more than the sum of our parts.

We have commissioned an evidence review alongside our engagement with young people and the youth sector, to inform the development of the National Youth Strategy. An interim report will be published this Spring.

We know that youth services will help deliver the government’s missions, and the National Youth Strategy will work alongside the work on development of Young Future hubs, the Curriculum and Assessment Review and further work across government to fulfill our commitment to improve young people’s lives.

On 12 November, the DCMS Secretary of State announced the launch of the Local Youth Transformation pilot in 2025/26 to start building back local authorities’ lost capability in the youth space, sowing the seeds for a much-needed rejuvenation of local youth services. We will be designing the programme and confirming delivery approaches over the coming months and will share more information in due course.

This Government recognises the vital role that youth services and activities play in improving the life chances and wellbeing of young people. The Secretary of State recently announced our plans to create a new National Youth Strategy, designed to put the views of young people at the centre of decision-making on policies that affect them. As the new National Youth Strategy is developed, the Government will continue to support access for young people to regular clubs and activities, adventures away from home and volunteering opportunities.

In 2024/25, Croydon Council were allocated £1.619 million for the delivery of Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.

In 2025/26, the department and the Department of Health and Social Care will provide a £126 million boost to give every child the best start in life and deliver on the Plan for Change. Funding will support local authorities to deliver Family Hubs and Start for Life services in areas with high deprivation, including Croydon, which has provisionally been allocated £1.709 million for the 2025/26 financial year. Final figures will be confirmed in due course.

The department has allocated £242 million in growth and falling rolls funding to local authorities through the 2024/25 dedicated schools grant (DSG). Local authorities’ allocations of growth and falling rolls funding for 2025/26 was confirmed in December 2024 and information for Croydon is published here: https://skillsfunding.service.gov.uk/view-latest-funding/local-authority/statement/306.

Local authorities can use their growth and falling rolls funding allocations to repurpose surplus space to create SEND units, resource bases, or wraparound childcare provision in mainstream schools, activity which the department knows some local authorities already undertake. This is intended to support schools with falling rolls where planning data shows that the surplus places will be needed. Local authorities now have additional flexibility to support schools through such falling rolls funds.

The forthcoming Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill will introduce new duties for mainstream state schools and local authorities to co-operate regarding their respective school admissions functions and for mainstream, special and alternative provision state schools to co-operate with local authorities regarding their place planning functions. The onus will be on schools and local authorities to work together constructively on these issues so that their statutory responsibilities can be fulfilled.

This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or in alternative provision (AP) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

The department is providing an increase of almost £1 billion for high needs budgets in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to £11.9 billion. Of that total, Croydon Council is being allocated a provisional high needs funding amount of over £97 million through the national funding formula (NFF), which is a 7% increase per head of their 2 to 18-year-old population, on their equivalent 2024/25 financial year NFF allocation. The allocations have been published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs-2025-to-2026.

Croydon Council will also be allocated extra funding for pay and pensions costs in special schools and AP. This funding is additional to the allocations through the high needs NFF, and the department will confirm shortly how the funding allocations will be calculated.

The Government is publishing a Get Britain Working White Paper setting out reforms to employment support to help tackle the elevated level of economic inactivity, support people into good work, and create an inclusive labour market in which everybody can participate and progress in work. These reforms are driven by a long-term ambition to reach an 80% employment rate and to reduce the UK’s inactivity rate back to pre-pandemic levels.

The White Paper will build on manifesto commitments including fundamental reform for DWP through a new service to support more people into work and help them get on in work, including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers; local Get Britain Working Plans for areas across Britain to set out how economic inactivity will be tackled at a local level, led by Mayors and local areas; and a Youth Guarantee for all people aged 18 to 21 in England, to ensure they have an offer of education, training or help to find work.

Through the Autumn Budget, £240 million funding has recently been announced for the White Paper measures and will help us deliver and build on these labour market reforms to Get Britain Working.

The Mental Health Bill, which has now passed from the House of Lords to the House of Commons, will give patients greater choice, autonomy, enhanced rights, and support, and will ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and respect throughout treatment.

In January 2025, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) concluded a series of investigations into mental health inpatient settings. In 2023/24, approximately 51% of patients were detained under the act. The investigations raised important concerns and set out recommendations to improve mental health care, protect patients and the public, and promote a safe working environment for staff. The findings have been published in a series of reports, which are available on the HSSIB’s website.

NHS England has launched its mental health, learning disability, and autism inpatient quality transformation programme to support cultural change and embed a new model of care across all National Health Service-funded mental health inpatient settings. Local health systems have now published their three-year plans for localising and realigning inpatient care in line with this vision.

In addition, the Government is investing £75 million to reduce inappropriate out of area placements for mental health patients, so that they can be supported closer to their communities and in more appropriate settings.

It is unacceptable that too many children and young people are not receiving the mental health care they need, and we know that waits for mental health services are far too long. That is why we will recruit 8,500 additional mental health workers across both adult, and children and young people’s mental health services.

The Department of Health and Social Care is working with Department for Education to consider how to deliver our commitment of access to a specialist mental health professional in every school. Alongside this we are working towards rolling out Young Futures hubs in every community, offering open access mental health services for young people.

Halving knife crime over the next decade is a key part of the Government’s Safer Streets mission. Prevention and early intervention to stop young people being drawn into crime is an integral part of that mission. That’s why the Government’s manifesto committed to offering young people a pathway out of violence by placing youth workers and mentors in A&E units and Alternative Provision Schools.

A&E navigator programmes are currently funded by Violence Reduction Units that are located in the areas worst affected by serious violence. These programmes place navigators, such as youth workers, in hospital emergency rooms to support children and young people with a violence-related injury and offer a pathway out of violence. We have provided £49.7m in 2025/6 for the continuation of the VRU programme, which includes provision for A&E navigators in VRU areas.

This year (25/26), we will continue to build on, and learn from, the work already underway on A&E navigators as well as working with the Youth Endowment Fund to further strengthen provision and ensure victims of violence and exploitation are supported.

We are establishing a Windrush Commissioner to act as an independent advocate for all those affected. This role will oversee the implementation of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review and act as a trusted voice for communities, driving improvements and promoting lasting change.

On appointment, the Commissioner will engage with Windrush stakeholders and communities to understand what they need and how the Commissioner can drive delivery of that change.

To ensure claimants are supported, we are also allocating £1.5million in government grant funding, which will be used to increase advocacy support for victims applying for the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are personally committed to halving knife crime over the next decade. It is a key part of the Government’s mission to take back our streets.

This Government is committed to ensuring that the police have the resources they need to tackle all crime effectively. The 2024-25 police funding settlement provides the Metropolitan Police Service with funding of up to £3.5 billion in 2024-25. This includes £185.3 million in recognition of the demands the force faces in policing the capital city.

The Home Office will also provide £175m of additional funding in 2024-25 to police forces to help with the cost of the pay award, of which the Metropolitan Police will receive a further £37.4 million for support with those costs.

As announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, the settlement will increase the core government grant for police forces and help support frontline policing levels across the country. Further details and force level allocations will be set out at the forthcoming police funding settlement.

The Home Office is also providing £66.3m funding this financial year (2024/25) to police forces in England and Wales for hotspot policing to tackle anti-social behaviour and serious violence. This includes £8.1m allocated to the Metropolitan Police.

Tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for this Government, and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission.

We will put thousands of new neighbourhood police and community support officers into local communities and we will crack down on those causing havoc on our high streets by introducing tougher powers, including new Respect Orders to tackle repeat offending.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer the Minister for Veterans and People gave on 12 May to Questions 50185, 50186, 50187, 50189, 50190, and 50191 to the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Cartlidge), and Question 50424 to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr Jopp).

Homelessness levels are far too high. This can have a devastating impact on those affected.

We must address this and deliver long term solutions. The Deputy Prime Minister is leading cross-government work to deliver the long-term solutions we need to get us back on track to ending all forms of homelessness. This includes chairing a dedicated Inter-Ministerial Group, bringing together ministers from across government to develop a long-term strategy.

We are already taking the first steps to get back on track to ending homelessness. As announced at the Budget, funding for homelessness services has been increased by £233 million compared to last year (2024/25). This increased spending will help to prevent rises in the number of families in temporary accommodation and help to prevent rough sleeping. This brings total Homelessness spend to nearly £1 billion in 25/26, a record level of funding.

The £1.2 billion Local Authority Housing Fund will provide capital funding directly to English councils and is expected to provide up to 7,000 homes by 2026. It will create a lasting asset for UK nationals by building a sustainable stock of affordable housing for local communities.

The Government is also working with 20 local authorities with the highest levels of B&B use for temporary accommodation through a new programme of Emergency Accommodation Reduction Pilots, backed by £5 million to test innovative approaches and kickstart new initiatives.

The government will bring forward its proposals for the Local Government Finance Settlement 2025-26 in the usual way towards the end of the calendar year. This will set out provisional allocations for local authorities and invite views via a formal consultation.