Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much of the Life Chances Fund remains to be spent.

The Life Chances Fund (LCF) is an £80m fund to help people in society who face the most significant barriers to leading happy and productive lives. It provides top-up contributions to locally commissioned Social impact Bonds (SIBs) that aim to tackle complex social problems.

All of the £80m Life Chances Fund has been awarded in principle to local commissioners, including local authorities and clinical commissioning groups. These commissioners are at various stages of designing and delivering the projects. Approximately £6,435,350 has so far been spent, leaving £73,564,650.

£5m of the spend to date has been devolved directly to Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with the remainder covering programme costs including the application process and support with setting up projects.

Payments for outcomes delivered by the new services are scheduled to begin in early 2019 and continue for the next six years.