Local Government

(asked on 28th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent steps he has taken to help ensure that (a) environmental health and (b) other local regulatory services are operating effectively with sufficient resources.


Answered by
Luke Hall Portrait
Luke Hall
Minister of State (Education)
This question was answered on 6th July 2021

To ensure the effective operation of regulatory services teams, the Department convened the Regulatory Services Task and Finish Group in December 2020. The purpose of this group is to help coordinate central government’s expectations of local regulatory services and to propose short and long-term options to support the sector. The Group has already taken action to help local authorities (LAs) manage the capacity of their regulatory services teams. In January 2021 the Group issued LAs with a letter setting out government’s perspective on priority regulatory activities to help LAs to prioritise their resources during the pressures of the winter period. In March 2021, the Group produced a forward look of upcoming regulatory activities coming into effect in the next year to assist LAs with their forward planning.

The Group is now focussed on developing a suite of recommendations to address the immediate and systemic issues faced by local authority regulatory services teams. These recommendations will consider areas including the availability and number of apprentices in regulatory services teams.

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