Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to make it easier to (a) prevent and (b) remove illegal traveller encampments.
Answered by Lord Pickles
This Government has given councils stronger powers to tackle unauthorised sites.
Last year, we issued clear guidance to councils, reminding them of the full range of measures they have.
But I remain concerned that councils and police commissioners are not using their powers, due to gold-plating of human rights rules. The public want to see fair play in the planning system.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what compensation payments have been made to senior executives of Rotherham Borough Council leaving their posts since 2012.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
The Department does not collate or hold this information. Local authorities are independent employers and it is for each council to make local, accountable decisions on the management of its workforce, including any payment made to staff leaving their employment. While Government has no involvement in these local decisions, we expect councils to be open and transparent about the decisions they make about the pay and rewards for staff, particularly senior staff. Under the Localism Act 2011, councils are required to prepare and publish an annual pay policy statement setting out their approach to pay matters, particularly senior pay. In our pay accountability guidance to accompany measures in the Localism Act, councils are asked to give full council the opportunity to vote on severance packages of £100,000 or more before they are rubber-stamped. It is unacceptable for information about compensation payments to be withheld from local taxpayers and we welcome the CLG Select Committee’s recent comments that councils should publish the rationale for, and amount of, any financial payment to a departing chief officer within a month of the decision so that the public can understand why such a payment has been made. Severance payments made to senior staff must already be disclosed in an authority’s annual Statement of Accounts and cannot be protected from disclosure by confidentiality agreements.
On 3 October, the Department further strengthened the public's ability to scrutinise councils by ensuring that they get the data they deserve through the local government transparency code. Part of that code is the requirement for councils to publish information on salaries for employees earning £50,000 or more, alongside a range of other pay and workforce information.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many officials of his Department work on the Troubled Families programme; and what their grade and pay scale is.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
[Holding Reply: Monday 14 July 2014]
The Troubled Families team, based in DCLG, was established in 2011 to join up efforts across the whole of government and to provide expert help to local authorities to drive forward the programme of turning around the lives of troubled families. Government data collected in 2011 estimated that £9 billion is spent annually on troubled families – an average of £75,000 per family each year. Of this, an estimated £8 billion is spent reacting to the problems these families have and cause with just £1 billion being spent on helping families to solve and prevent problems in the longer term.
As of the end of June 2014, my Department had the following number of officials working on Troubled Families programme: 4 Executive Officers (and equivalents); 3 Higher Executive Officers; 7 Senior Executive Officers, 3 Grade 7, 5 Grade 6, 2 Deputy Directors, 1 Director and 1 Director General.
The latter two senior salaries are published as part of our transparency agenda, and are respectively (a) within the range of £110,000 - £114,999 and (b) within the range of £130,000 to £134,999.
More generally, Civil Servants are paid within a grade pay scale. These ranges are Executive Officer (£22,279 to £31,225); Higher Executive Officer (£26,058 to £39,513); Senior Executive Officer (£32,311 to £45,985); Grade 7 (£40,852 to £57,110); Grade 6 (£50,203 to £70,375) and Deputy Director (£62,000 to £117,800).
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what progress has been made in turning round families in the Troubled Families programme; how many families in each local authority area have taken advantage of the scheme; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
The Troubled Families Programme is making good progress. As at the end of May 2014, local authorities had turned around 52,833 families. As at the end of March 2014, they had identified 111,574 families; and were working with 97,202 of those families.
My Department regularly publishes this information and the latest breakdown by individual local authority can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what criteria will be used to assess the performance of the Troubled Families programme; and how this links to the triggering of payment to providers.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
In March 2012 the Government published the Financial Framework for the Troubled Families Programme:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/11469/2117840.pdf
This set out the criteria that local authorities should use in identifying families eligible for central funding, and what results they would need to achieve in order to claim the results-based payment.
My Department has also commissioned an independent evaluation of the programme which is looking at the progress and outcomes local authorities achieve with troubled families across a broader set of issues, and the savings made as a result.