Perran Moon

A top priority for the government is to drive high and rising education standards for children across the country. The department is reviewing mainstream free school projects to ensure that they continue to meet localised need for places, offer value for money and are not to the detriment of other schools in the local area.

Departmental officials have worked closely with Truro and Penwith Academy Trust and Cornwall local authority to gather the required information. No decisions have yet been taken.

Stakeholders are welcome to submit their views to the department. These will be taken into consideration before a final decision is made by Ministers.

The review is ongoing. The department will update all trusts and local authorities on the next steps in the new year.

We will also provide an update on the overall review in due course.

The department is committed to giving every child the best start in life, regardless of where and how they are educated. We cannot ignore the rising numbers of home-educated children and official data which shows that growing numbers of children have been moved into home education due to mental health concerns or lack of provision for special educational needs in their local schools.

Local authorities have legal duties to be satisfied that all children are receiving a suitable education. However, this duty is undermined by the fact that parents have no obligation to inform their local authority of their decision to home educate. This means that local authorities are unable to fulfil their duties. There is a risk that children are going under the radar and missing out on the education they deserve that will enable them to access the best opportunities in life.

For this reason, the government will use the Children’s Wellbeing Bill to require English local authorities to maintain registers of children not in school. Parents and certain out-of-school education providers will be required to provide information for those registers. This will help local authorities piece together a fuller and more accurate picture of those children who are receiving education otherwise than at school and target resources to locating and supporting those who are missing out on education. Local authorities will also have a duty to provide support to those home-educators who request it, which will act as an incentive for families to register.

The registers will contain information on those children who are registered on a school roll and are receiving education otherwise than at school. It will not include children who are on a school roll but failing to attend. The department is taking separate action on that important issue of persistent absence.

In terms of this new system of registration, parents can be assured that the registers will not be used to criminalise any parent who does not send their child to school. Parents who do not provide information for the registers will result in their local authority being unable to be satisfied that a child is not receiving a suitable education and so the local authority will need to proceed to a formal request for evidence about that education. If that evidence is not forthcoming, or is insufficient, this will usually lead to the local authority needing to issue a School Attendance Order. This is the same mechanism that exists in the current law; no change will be made.

The government takes the matter of data protection very seriously, including any threats to privacy and personal data. Local authorities will be legally restricted as to whom they may share register information with and for what purposes. The usual provisions of the UK-GDPR will apply to all data processing activities.

The department continues to work with local authorities on existing non-statutory registers and to collect data from those registers.

This is a devolved matter, and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

Defra is aware of the issue raised in the REview24 report. We are actively engaging with the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA) and the landfill gas industry to establish the scale of the potential impact of the ending of the Renewable Obligations Scheme from 2027.

The Government is committed to tackling methane emissions from landfill. We will achieve this by developing and delivering policies to support diverting waste from landfill, carrying out ground-breaking research in measuring and managing methane emissions in the waste sector, and exploring how to support and enable additional ways of managing legacy emissions such as passive capture.

Methane emissions from organic waste was a priority at COP29 and the Government was pleased to endorse the Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste, building on our Global Methane Pledge commitments.

To speed up the delivery of new defences and ensure that the challenges facing businesses and rural and coastal communities are adequately taken into account, a consultation will be launched in the new year which will include a review of the existing formula for allocating money to proposed flood defences.

We want to ensure that floods funding policy drives close partnership working and brings in wider financial contributions to flood and coastal erosion schemes, to make Government funding go further. We plan to consider this as part of the abovementioned review.

This is a devolved matter with regard to Scotland and Northern Ireland; hunting with dogs is a reserved matter with respect to Wales and therefore, the information provided relates to England and Wales only.

The Government committed to enacting a ban on Trail Hunting in line with our manifesto commitment. Further announcements will be made in due course.

The Government is committed to delivering greener transport by accelerating the transition to electric vehicles. As set out in our manifesto, there will be no sales of new pure combustion engine cars from 2030 under our plans. We will set out more details in due course.

Around one million people are waiting to access mental health services, and vacancy rates for mental health trusts are around 10% - the highest of any NHS sector.

This government will fix our broken NHS so people can be confident of accessing high quality mental health support when needed.

This includes recruiting 8,500 more mental health workers, introducing specialist mental health professionals in every school, rolling out Young Futures hubs in every community and modernising the Mental Health Act.