Oliver Heald

Detailed information on this is not held centrally.
Historic England has the most comprehensive list of churches and other listed buildings that have experience thefts or attempted thefts of metal.

This information is not held centrally. The St Albans Diocesan Office keeps a record of the types of metals stolen from churches and the frequency of thefts.
For a more detailed breakdown please contact the Pastoral and Advisory Secretary, Holywell Lodge, 41 Holywell Hill, St Albans, Herts. AL1 1HE.

The Cathedrals and Church Buildings Division of the Archbishops’ Council provide advice and guidance to churches on a range of issues, including roofing materials. https://www.churchofengland.org/more/church-resources/churchcare/advice-and-guidance-church-buildings

Incidents of theft from non-metal roofs are rare, though there is a risk to some rarer types of slate or stone, which are most vulnerable when they are removed for repair.
Terne-coated stainless steel is unlikely to be stolen as it is difficult to manipulate and has a low scrap value for the work and risk involved. Metal and other material is least likely to be stolen from a church that has installed an effective alarm.

Lead is the most likely metal to be stolen due to its value and the ease of removing it, followed by copper roofing and rainwater pipes.

The National Church Institutions do not hold information centrally about the theft of metal from Church of England churches, but records are kept at a diocesan level. Anecdotal evidence points to an increase in instances of metal theft from churches nationwide, with East Anglia and the Midlands being most affected.

Home Office Counting Rules do not require the police to record if a theft is from a listed building. The Church of England welcomes the July 2019 Sentencing Council proposals to introduce new sentencing guidelines for arson, criminal damage and vandalism of national heritage assets, including listed buildings, historic objects or unique parts of our historic environment.

Money to fund repairs or adaptations to church buildings is raised by local churches mainly through fundraising and local giving. There is no central Government funding, except through grants in respect of VAT paid on repairs to listed churches.

The following table for the Diocese of St Albans shows cases of metal theft or attempted theft since 2015. The Diocese covers the majority of the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire area and contains 380 Anglican churches.

The Diocese provides advice to local churches on protective and preventative measures, including forensic marking and roof alarms, working with the Beds and Herts Historic Churches Trust and the Allchurches Trust. Grants of up to £3,000 per church have been made available to more than 55 churches in the Diocese. In addition the Diocesan Board of Finance allocated 29 roof alarm grants in 2017 and 2018 from small trust funds for church repairs and maintenance. As a result there has been a significant reduction in the number of cases of metal theft in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, though incidents still occur. For example, in June 2019 St Mary's Church in Furneux Pelham north east Hertfordshire, had 90% of its lead roof stolen or damaged over a single weekend.

Data on household energy prices are collected and published by the Office for National Statistics. This information is re-published by DECC, with the data is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/monthly-domestic-energy-price-stastics.

The latest data show that overall prices for domestic fuel have come down by 2.0% between January 2014 and January 2015. Over this period, liquid fuels are down by 31%; gas is down by 1.0%; electricity is down by 0.7%; and solid fuels have risen by 1.1%.

We are committed to expanding NCS, which is why the Chancellor announced our ambition that 300,000 young people participate in NCS every year by 2019/20 so that they can learn new skills and give back to their communities.

We take great care to ensure that all young people, regardless of background, can take part, providing bursaries and additional support where necessary.

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Central and North Ipswich on 1 July 2015 to UIN 900668.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Since 2011 over 130,000 young people have taken part in National Citizen Service (NCS), giving an estimated 3.2 million hours of volunteering to their communities. This has consisted of over 8,000 social action projects ranging from the renovation of community spaces, to charity fundraising events.

The independent evaluation of the NCS programme also demonstrates that it is creating a movement of young people who feel a greater responsibility towards their community and who are more likely to help out locally in the future.

817 young people took part in National Citizen Service (NCS) in North East Hertfordshire and surrounding area in 2014.

This year will again see NCS programmes taking place in every local authority across England, giving more young people the opportunity to take part in this life changing programme.

The government is committed to giving as many young people as possible the chance to take part in NCS and the significant growth of that the programme has seen so far is set to continue this year.

Our aim is to ensure that every affected postmaster is fully recompensed for their losses and the suffering they have had to endure as a result of the Horizon scandal. To date, more than £148 million has been paid to 2,700 victims across all compensation schemes, 95 convictions have been overturned and, of those, 30 have agreed full and final settlements. Just over £30 million has been paid out in compensation to those with overturned convictions, including interim payments.

I cannot comment on individual claims for reasons of confidentiality.

The R&D Places Strategy, to be published later this year, will ensure that research and innovation benefits the economy and society in nations, regions and local areas across the UK contributing to the Government’s wider levelling up ambitions. We want to build on existing place-based funding initiatives and work with stakeholders to promote increased private investment across the UK to support promising research and innovation that drives local economic growth.

The Advance Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) will cement the UK’s position as a science superpower, building on the UK’s proud history of scientific excellence by seeking to fund transformational advances in science and technology – discoveries that create new technologies and new industries that drive our future economy. ARIA will be equipped for this work by having minimal research bureaucracy and prioritising agility: it will move quickly and decisively to ensure the UK retains its competitive edge in R&D. We will appoint an exceptional and visionary leadership team and entrust them to set the research agenda on where and what to fund for ARIA.

The early May bank holiday will move from 4 to 8 May 2020 to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of VE Day. This is to ensure as many people as possible have the opportunity to honour our heroes of the Second World War. The Government acknowledges that the decision will bring economic benefits to some sectors and businesses and some disruption to others. The Government has corresponded directly with representatives from the calendar printing industry and has no plans for compensation.

The Government has committed to legislate to improve the clarity of the employment status tests, reflecting the reality of modern working relationships. This will help to ensure that both businesses and individuals understand their rights and obligations.

Employment status is a complex issue and so it is only right that we take time to consider how best to achieve change that works for all. We will bring forward detailed proposals on status in due course.

Royal Mail is a private company. The accuracy of addresses in its database is a matter for the Royal Mail.

Officials are working very closely with the ECB on plans to deliver the safe return of club cricket as soon as possible. We are working at pace to shape guidance that will allow the safe return of competitive cricket and other team sports. Any shared sporting equipment may risk transmission, but these risks can be mitigated with good hygiene practice as being adopted across a wide range of sectors. I hope to make further progress on this in the coming weeks so that teams can enjoy a great cricketing summer.

The issues around the re-opening of swimming pools are being considered in a number of fora. The consideration of different venues and the activities involved are underpinned by understanding the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 associated with particular activities.

We recognise the importance of re-opening our indoor and outdoor pools and we agree that swimming is a great way for people of all ages to stay fit and healthy. There are concerns about transmission around points of contact within such facilities, like changing rooms due to the high volume of contacts. As such, we need to provide reassurance that these facilities will be safe, and are working hard to achieve this in the coming weeks.

The Sport Working Group, led by myself, feeds into the Secretary of State’s Cultural Renewal Taskforce and ensures strong sector and expert support for the co-development of guidelines and will help leisure facilities become Covid-secure and re-open as early as possible in July.

The Government is actively working towards a safe way to re-open these facilities, with supporting guidance.

There are currently no plans to expand the portfolio of DCMS-Sponsored national museums.

Many of the existing national museums display material relating to Black, Asian and minority ethnic history and culture as part of their permanent exhibitions. This includes material displayed at the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, V&A, Tate, Horniman, and National Museums Liverpool. These collections include art, ceramics, fashion and photography. Many museums work with diaspora communities to better understand collection items and place them in historical and contemporary context. A number of museums have also held temporary exhibitions that focus on Black, Asian and minority ethnic history and culture.

BDUK has extensive engagement with a wide range of stakeholders.

Over the last 12 months BDUK has met with representatives from across the following stakeholder groups: central, local, and devolved governments; the European Commission; Ofcom; communications providers; suppliers; local communities; and industry bodies.

The Department is currently undertaking evaluation of the Superfast Broadband Programme’s role in improving broadband connectivity and reaching areas that would otherwise not have been reached through commercial plans. The evaluation is focusing on the economic and social impacts of the programme, including the impact of the superfast programme on business performance and growth, employment, on quality of life and the reduction in benefits claimants in areas that would have lost out to higher connectivity areas, if it were not for the programme.

The Department released The UK Broadband Impact Study in 2013 which made an assessment of the impacts of faster broadband including the economic impacts. The study can be accessed on the Department's website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-broadband-impact-study--2). The Department will be producing results from the current evaluation in 2018.

The department is working with The Diamond Learning Partnership Trust, the responsible body for the school, to return pupils to face-to-face education as soon as possible. The trust is considering using alternative teaching sites and whether to install temporary facilities on the existing site. A loss adjustor from the Risk Protection Arrangement scheme is carrying out a site assessment on 12 January 2024. The department will discuss next steps with the trust once the outcomes from the site assessment have been received.

The government is committed to ensuring that the number and distribution of medical school places are in line with England’s workforce requirements and continues to monitor the effectiveness of current arrangements.

Applications for medicine and dentistry made by the June deadline increased by over 20,000 this year compared to last year for all domiciles. We have increased the medical and dentistry caps so that providers can take on more students and we have run a brokerage scheme to help move over 80 students at oversubscribed providers into unfilled places.

In addition, we are providing up to £10m in grant funding for providers to take on more students in high-cost subjects, such as medicine, dentistry, nursing and other lab-based courses.

The Government recognises the great value of short breaks, which provide a valuable range of opportunities for disabled children and their families, and that all possible steps should be taken to reduce the impact that services ending has on disabled children and their families. Since 2011, local authorities have been under a duty to provide a range of short breaks services and to publish a local short breaks services statement showing what services are available, and how they can be accessed.

We recognise the value of local authorities working with partners wherever possible to support and expand short breaks provision. Clinical commissioning groups have a responsibility under section 3 of the NHS Act 2006 to commission health services to meet the needs of their population, including those of the children and young people for whom they are responsible, to a reasonable extent. The Mandate on which NHS England operates also includes the expectation that the NHS will reduce the health gap between people with mental health problems, learning disabilities and autism and the population as a whole, and support them to live full, healthy and independent lives.

To support local authorities in meeting their duties, we made available £800 million in grants between April 2011 and March 2015, plus £80m of capital funding to support new projects. Responsibility for short breaks provision rests with local authorities, but the Department for Education has offered support and challenge to help make sure they meet their statutory requirements, have funded innovative grants that promote best practice for delivering services, and continue to consider how we can best support local authorities who are working to deliver sustainable short breaks provision.

The Government is able to oversee how much local authorities have planned to spend on short breaks provision through authorities’ annual section 251 returns. In Hertfordshire local authority spending on short breaks for disabled children increased between 2014/15 and 2015/16 (the latest figures available), from £5,563,492 to £6,105,010.

Local authorities can use the high needs block of the Dedicated Schools Grant to fund provision for home-educated children, where it is appropriate to do so. Guidance is available from the Department of Education on funding provision for home-educated children.

As set out in the ‘Special educational needs and disability code of practice’[1], where local authorities and parents agree that home education is the right provision for a child or young person with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan, then the local authority must arrange the special educational provision set out in the plan.

In cases where the EHC plan gives the name of a school or type of school where the child will be educated and the parents decide to educate him or her at home, the local authority is not under a duty to make the special educational provision set out in the plan, provided it is satisfied that the arrangements made by the parents are suitable.

Where parents choose to home educate children who have special educational needs but do not have EHC plans, local authorities should work with parents and consider whether to provide support in the home to help the parents make suitable provision.

The presumption is that looked-after children should access full-time learning in an education setting that best meets their needs. In the exceptional circumstances where a decision is made to home educate a looked-after child it would be for a local authority’s Virtual School Head, who is responsible for promoting the educational achievement of looked-after children, to decide how pupil premium funding should be used to support the young person.

Where a child’s carer has a special guardianship order, that person would have full parental rights over the child and would therefore be entitled to whatever home education support the local authority would normally provide to a parent, as described above.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/elective-home-education.

At a time of difficult financial decisions for the country, we have made a conscious choice to prioritise spending on education. We will continue to protect the schools budget, and will ensure that the funding schools receive increases as pupil numbers increase. In 2015-16, we added £390million to the budgets of 69 local authorities considered to have been unfairly funded in previous years, including £11.3million of additional funding for Hertfordshire.

The Environment Agency is currently developing a microplastics monitoring plan for English rivers . The Government has prioritised chalk streams in policy and legislation. In the Plan for Water, we have reaffirmed our commitment to protecting chalk streams and recognised them as having a special natural heritage.

Last year the Government launched the most ambitious plan to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows in water company history. The Environment Agency is currently developing a microplastics monitoring plan for English rivers . The Government has prioritised chalk streams in policy and legislation. In the Plan for Water, we reaffirmed our commitment to protecting chalk streams and recognised them as having a special natural heritage.

On 1^st July 2021 Defra released a written ministerial statement on reducing demand for water in which we committed to introduce a mandatory water efficiency label. We published a consultation on 2^nd September including our proposal for dual labelling for white goods that already have an energy label: UK Mandatory Water Efficiency Labelling - Defra - Citizen Space (https://consult.defra.gov.uk/water-efficiency-labelling/water-efficiency-labelling/).

We are currently consulting on five candidate Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). The consultation closes on 28^th September. All evidence gathered will be analysed and will be used to inform the Secretary of State's decision on which sites to designate. Any pilot HPMAs will be designated by 6^th July 2023, within one year of the consultation launch.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a devolved competency and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

We have designated a comprehensive network of MPAs and are now focused on making sure they are properly protected. Using new powers provided by the Fisheries Act 2020, we have already introduced byelaws in the first four offshore sites to protect sensitive habitats and species from bottom-towed gear and other damaging fishing activity. A call for evidence relating to the next 13 offshore sites has also been published and we are aiming to have all 40 MPAs in English offshore waters protected from damaging fishing activity by 2024.

In 2016 DFID support in South Sudan has contributed to 2.3 million people receiving life-saving humanitarian assistance. Our education programmes have enabled 120,000 girls to complete primary education and provided 9.2 million textbooks. DFID’s Health Pooled Fund has provided primary care treatment to 8.7 million people.