Asked by: Peter Lamb (Labour - Crawley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether her Department plans to implement the recommendations on a Housing Revenue Account agreement outlined in the report commissioned by Southwark council entitled securing the future of council housing, published in July 2024.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The government are giving careful consideration to the recommendations of the report in question as part of our ongoing commitment to support local authorities facing Housing Revenue Account financial pressures.
Asked by: Peter Lamb (Labour - Crawley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she plans to take steps to enable communities covered by a borough council to retain (a) mayors, (b) honorary freemen and (c) honorary aldermen; and how appointments of other local officers of dignity will be made after unitarisation.
Answered by Jim McMahon - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Government is committed to ensuring that the treasured historic and ceremonial rights and privileges of local communities will be protected through the local government reorganisation process. General regulations governing unitarisation exercises provide that honorary freemen and aldermen of predecessor local authorities retain their status for the relevant successor unitary authorities.
After reorganisation, parish councils may make ceremonial appointments for their area. Where there is no such parish, at the request of the council involved, we can establish charter trustees for the areas of predecessor borough or city areas to preserve their historic rights and privileges, including the ability to appoint a mayor, deputy mayor, and honorary freemen and aldermen. We recognise this as an important issue for areas and if there will be a need for legislation to establish charter trustees this will be discussed with the area in advance of reorganisation.
Asked by: Peter Lamb (Labour - Crawley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what role the Office of Local Government will play in examining council spending.
Answered by Jim McMahon - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
We are currently reviewing the role of Office for Local Government and we will announce the outcome shortly. Scrutiny of council spending is clearly important, and that is why we are committed to overhauling the broken local audit system we inherited.
We have already taken decisive action to help clear the significant backlog of unaudited accounts and will shortly set out longer-term plans to fix local audit.