Sarah Bool

The Industrial Strategy is a 10-year plan to back our strengths and realise Britain’s potential, targeting government investment towards eight-growth driving sectors (IS-8). The Strategy’s place-based approach focuses efforts on the city regions and clusters where the IS-8 concentrate, to identify and accelerate the highest-potential opportunities in these places. There are clusters of the growth driving sectors across the whole country, including in rural areas, and the policy package addresses the biggest constraints to growth highlighted by these businesses.

The Strategic Sites Accelerator will prepare and accelerate strategic sites for development. The Office for Investment and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are working closely together to identify sites for development which align closely with the Industrial Strategy’s strategic focus and the Government’s Plan for Change.

The Cluster Champions programme is designed to provide up to £100 million of additional targeted investment to businesses in the eight Industrial Strategy sectors in ten clusters located in city regions across the whole of the UK. While not part of the clusters, high-growth SMEs in South Northamptonshire benefit from access to the £400 million Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, which provides debt and equity finance to businesses across the Midlands.

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is committed to supporting UK businesses, including in South Northamptonshire, including those in the manufacturing industry, to grow and export. UK businesses can access DBT's wealth of export support via great.gov.uk. This comprises an online support offer and a wider network of support including the Export Academy, UK Export Finance, the International Markets network and one-to-one support from International Trade Advisers.

As part of our work on a new trade strategy and a small business strategy, we are looking at further proposals to help UK businesses to export more.

Hairdressing salons and barbers, like other employers, are subject to normal business regulations such as health and safety requirements, employer and public liability insurance. The Hairdressers Registration Act of 1964 already provides for a UK register of qualified hairdressers and HMRC will investigate evidence suggesting businesses have misclassified individuals for tax purposes and Government collaborates closely with law enforcement to monitor criminal behaviour.

The Government has no immediate plans to introduce further regulation of the hair industry, but we will always remain open to evidence

Clean energy projects in South Northamptonshire and other local authorities will benefit from ongoing reforms to the grid connection process which will release up to 500GW of capacity from the queue, enabling accelerated connections for schemes that are ready to progress and aligned with our strategic needs, as set out in the Clean Power Action Plan.

As set out in the Industrial Strategy, the Connections Accelerator Service will support demand projects to connect to the grid, including prioritising those that create high-quality jobs and bring the greatest economic value.

The Government considers that the safety risks posed by BESS are small and well managed under the robust regulatory framework overseen by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). This framework requires responsible parties to take measures to ensure health and safety throughout all stages of a battery system’s deployment.

The safety standards framework for BESS is kept under review to respond to changing circumstances. Government, working alongside the industry-led Electricity Storage Health and Safety Governance Group, will continue to monitor events in the sector to ensure that a robust framework is sustained.

The Government considers that the safety risks posed by BESS are small and well managed under the robust regulatory framework overseen by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). This framework requires responsible parties to take measures to ensure health and safety throughout all stages of a battery system’s deployment.

The safety standards framework for BESS is kept under review to respond to changing circumstances. Government, working alongside the industry-led Electricity Storage Health and Safety Governance Group, will continue to monitor events in the sector to ensure that a robust framework is sustained.

The Department does not plan to publish a national register of safety incidents and near-misses involving battery energy storage systems (BESS). However, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has developed a publicly available database of global BESS failure incidents. The EPRI database can be accessed here: https://storagewiki.epri.com/index.php/BESS_Failure_Incident_Database

As part of our Warm Homes Plan, the Government has committed an initial £3.4 billion over the next 3 years towards heat decarbonisation and household energy efficiency measures, including those in rural communities.

This includes supporting property owners in England and Wales through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, offering grants up to £7,500 for heat pumps and £5,000 for biomass boilers. This also includes £1.8 billion to support low-income households through the Warm Homes: Local Grant and Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund.

Additional support is also provided through the Energy Company Obligation which offers insulation and low-carbon heating to GB households.

According to the independent website Thinkbroadband.com, over 99% of homes and businesses in the South Northamptonshire constituency can access superfast broadband speeds (>=30 Mbps) and over 93% have access to a gigabit-capable broadband connection (>1000 Mbps).

To improve this coverage further, CityFibre is delivering a Project Gigabit contract across Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes, targeted at bringing gigabit-capable broadband to homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas that are unlikely to be otherwise reached by suppliers’ commercial rollout. Approximately 1,700 premises in the South Northamptonshire constituency are currently expected to benefit from this contract. The vast majority of these premises are in rural parts of the constituency.

The Government is committed to ensuring that communities across the UK benefit from high-quality sports facilities, removing barriers to participation and enabling as many people as possible to be active.

The Government provides the majority of funding for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England - which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding in areas of greatest need to tackle inactivity levels through community-led solutions.

In March, DCMS confirmed an additional £100 million investment in new and upgraded facilities across the UK as part of our Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme. Our delivery partner for the programme in England is the Football Foundation, who plan their investment pipeline using Local Football Facility Plans (LFFPs), which are developed in partnership with local authorities so as to understand the needs of each community. These plans are being updated to better reflect current demand.

Future funding is subject to the ongoing Spending Review process, with further details to follow in due course.

In the South Northamptonshire constituency, Arts Council England has provided over £600,000 of funding between 2021-2025.

This includes 11 awards across combined arts, music and theatre, totalling more than £290,000. “The Play’s The Thing” Theatre Company received £39,366 for their biennial ‘Taking the Stage’ symposium, celebrating the role of women in the performing arts.

Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice has also supported four individual artists with a total of £47,113 across theatre and visual arts. ItsCreative People and Places funding stream has awarded £321,703 per annum to ‘Made with Many’ for 2022-25 – to produce events and activities that put the community at the heart of commissioning artists and producing new and exciting events, through conversations with local people and community decision-making panels.

Since 1994, the National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded more than £18.2m to 95 projects in South Northamptonshire. Examples of organisations and projects they have supported include £11.6m in support of Silverstone Heritage and a grant of £233,800 supporting much needed repairs to the roof of the Grade I listed All Saints' Church, Middleton Cheney.

Since 2020, Historic England provided £56,000 towards re-roofing the Brewhouse at Sulgrave Manor. They also provided financial support for the Peterborough Diocese Places of Worship Support Officer for 10 years up to 2024 and £4,000 for Weedon Lois Castle site.

The Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme provide grants towards VAT paid on repairs and maintenance to the nation's listed places of worship. Since August 2022, a total of £228,640.15 has been awarded to 33 Listed Places of Worship in the South Northamptonshire constituency area.

This year, the Secretary of State also announced a new £270 million Arts Everywhere Fund. This will include support to museums, heritage, arts and music venues across the country and is a critical step that this Government is taking to help create jobs, boost local economies, and expand access to arts, heritage and culture for communities.

The department recognises the essential role that small, rural schools play in their communities. The national funding formula (NFF) accounts for the particular challenges, including those of providing for pupils with special educational needs (SEN), faced by small schools in rural areas through the lump sum and sparsity factors. The NFF lump sum for the 2025/26 financial year is set at £145,100 and provides a fixed amount of funding that is unrelated to pupil-led factors. In addition, eligible (small, rural) primary schools attract up to £57,400, and eligible secondary or all-through schools attract up to £83,400, in sparsity funding in 2025/26 through the NFF.

Where the additional support for a pupil with SEN exceeds £6,000 per annum, the local authority provides the school with extra funding from its high needs budget. The department is providing £1 billion more for high needs budgets in 2025/26, bringing total high needs funding to over £12 billion, to help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting their pupils with complex needs. Of that total, West Northamptonshire Council is being allocated over £79 million through the high needs funding block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG), an increase of £5.5 million on the 2024/25 DSG high needs block, calculated using the high needs NFF.

High-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s educational outcome. Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is critical to the government’s opportunity mission and boosting the life chances for every child. This is why the department is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new teachers across secondary and special schools and in our colleges over the course of this Parliament.

We have announced a 4% pay award to school teachers and leaders, accepting in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s pay recommendation and two months ahead of last year.

This comes on top of the 5.5% pay award that we announced last July. We are seeing early improvements in recruitment and retention with over 2,000 more people training to become secondary school teachers this year. Recruitment is also on track to improve further for 2025/26, with 1,070 more acceptances to postgraduate and teacher degree apprenticeship initial teacher training courses in secondary subjects by the end of April 2025, compared to the same time last year. Additionally, over 2,500 more teachers are expected to stay in the profession over the next three years.

We are doing more to continue to improve recruitment and retention, including in rural secondary schools. We have increased funding for training bursaries to £233 million in 2025/26, worth up to £29,000 tax-free. We are also offering scholarships worth up to £31,000 tax free. For 2024/25 and 2025/26, the department is also offering a targeted retention incentive worth up to £6,000 after tax for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including rural and coastal areas.

As part of our recruitment and retention strategy, it is vital that we improve the day-to-day experience of teachers and ensure that teaching is once again a respected and attractive profession that teachers remain and thrive in. We are supporting teachers to reduce their workload and improve their wellbeing and enabling greater opportunities for greater flexible working.

I refer the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire to the answer of 12 March 2025 to Question 34828.

The Department for Business and Trade is responsible for the overall policy on shared parental leave, but how it applies in schools specifically is covered by the Burgundy Book, a national agreement negotiated with employers by the six teachers’ organisations. Further information can be found on the Local Government Association website.

The department has no authority or responsibility for the Burgundy Book and, therefore, we are unable to provide any further information on this matter.

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

Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available to children and young people, providing statutory input into education, health and care (EHC) assessments and advising the school workforce on how to support children and young people with SEND.

As set out in the SEND Code of Practice, when carrying out an EHC needs assessment, local authorities are required to seek psychological advice and information from an educational psychologist, who should normally be employed or commissioned by the local authority.

As the employers of educational psychology services, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that their services are adequately staffed. The department does not hold data on waiting times for the commissioning of educational psychologists.

However, the department is taking measures to support local authorities by investing in building the pipeline. We are investing over £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists from 2024. This is in addition to the £10 million currently being invested in the training of over 200 educational psychologists who began their training in September 2023.

To support retention, following graduation, trainees who have had their training funded by the department are required to remain in local authority employment for a minimum period. For trainees beginning their course in September 2024, this requirement has increased to three years.

Delivery of mental health interventions sits with the Department for Health and Social Care, who are investing in mental health to ensure it receives the same attention as physical health. This includes the hiring of 8,500 new mental health support workers, which will reduce delays and provide faster treatment closer to people’s homes – including in rural communities.

Defra is supporting farming welfare charities through funding the Farmer Welfare Grant. This aids organisations to deliver projects which will support mental health and build resilience in local farming communities. One recipient, the Farming Community Network, is using the funding to expand their FarmWell platform. This online resource provides business and personal resilience advice on topics including mental health, isolation, depression and suicide.  

Currently, grant recipients operate in Cumbria, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and online via the FCN’s FarmWell platform.

The RPA also runs a Welfare Forum, which brings together England’s largest farming and welfare organisations that provide mental health support to discuss issues farmers are facing.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has worked closely with Defra throughout the development of the Precision Breeding legislation and will continue to do so.

Following stakeholder engagement on the draft technical guidance for Precision Bred organisms for food and feed use, the FSA is currently revising its draft technical guidance to be clearer about what information the Precision Breeding Regulations require.

The Government is committed to supporting research to unlock the potential of precision breeding. The latest programme of Defra’s Genetic Improvement Networks (GINs), which is supported by up to £15 million in funding over 5 years, includes funding for research into precision breeding.

Earlier this year under the Farming Innovation Programme we announced a £12.5 million competition focused specifically on precision breeding. We also welcome the announcement within the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy to allocate at least £200 million to the Programme up to 2030. This will offer targeted funding to drive innovation in agriculture. Precision breeding has also been recognised within the Industrial Strategy and will continue to be in scope within the industry led FIP competitions.

There are significant opportunities for innovation in the fertiliser sector, particularly development of newer types of fertilising products and production processes that improve nutrient use efficiency, which are made from clean energy or recycled nutrients from other materials.

Novel fertilisers have been in scope of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, including within the Programme’s £15 million nutrient management competition, and successful applicants to this competition started their projects earlier this year. We welcome the announcement within the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy to allocate at least £200 million to the Programme up to 2030 which will offer targeted funding to drive innovation in agriculture.

Recently Defra has launched the Accelerating Development of Practices and Technologies Fund (ADOPT) as part of the above Farming Innovation Programme, committing up to £20.6 million of funding in 25/26 to support the introduction of innovative technologies aimed at improving productivity, resilience and sustainability.

Fertiliser product regulation does not fall within the scope of the UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement.

The secondary legislation needed to implement The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 for plants in England was passed on 13 May 2025 and the new regulatory framework will commence on 14 November 2025.

The Department has engaged with the Welsh Government at Ministerial and official level to discuss the implementation of these regulations. The Department recognises the importance of working closely with Welsh Government on this and will continue to do so in the run up to the commencement of the new regulations.

The Oxford-Cambridge (OxCam) Growth Corridor has been identified as a key priority for this Government with South Northamptonshire included within this corridor. Lord Vallance, appointed as the OxCam Champion, is exploring options for how best to deliver economic growth across the whole corridor, which includes considering improved transport infrastructure for the area.

South Northamptonshire’s strengths in Advanced Manufacturing, particularly around the Silverstone Technology Cluster also means it stands to benefit from measures set out in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy.

Sections 59 and 60 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 places a duty on local highway authorities and statutory undertakers (including water companies) to co-ordinate works in order minimise inconvenience for road users and for safety. This is supported by the Code of Practice for the Co-ordination of Street and Road Works produced by my Department to ensure that, although there will always be some disruption from road and street works, these are minimised. Where road closures are unavoidable as part of construction of HS2, contractors work closely with relevant local highway authorities to minimise disruption to local communities.

The Government recognises the vital role community transport operators play in connecting people with their communities, enabling access to employment, education, and other essential services such as healthcare.

The Department makes available up to £3.8 million each year through the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) to community transport operators. An uplift of 60% has been added to BSOG claims for community transport operators until 31 March 2026. This means community transport operators will receive £1.60 for every £1 claimed, reflecting the increased costs faced by the sector.