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Home Information Packs
Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to what criteria the energy performance certificate within home information packs will have to conform to meet the EU directive on the energy performance of buildings; what standard measurement scale will be used; whether different measurements will be required where there are different types of construction within the same building; and whether the energy performance certificate will be required to include information on (a) roof insulation, (b) cavity wall insulation, (c) hot water tank insulation and (d) improvements that could be made. [75419]
Yvette Cooper: The regulations laid before Parliament on 14 June 2006 and made under part 5 of the Housing Act 2004 require that the Energy Performance Certificate within the Home Condition Report complies with the legislation implementing the EU energy performance of buildings directive.
The methodology used to prepare reports will be the reduced data standard assessment procedure (RDSAP) for residential property up to 450 sq m. For larger or more unusual homes, the methodology used will be the simplified building energy method (SBEM).
Home inspectors will collect a standard data set that identifies size, construction, levels of existing insulation, heating and heating controls. It will provide both energy and environmental impact ratings on an A-G grade. It will also give an indication of energy costs, suggestions for measures to cut energy bills and improve the home’s performance ratings, and for other measures to reduce CO2 emissions.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate she has made of the likely annual cost to vendors of home information packs; and what estimate she has made of the total annual value to purchasers of the packs. [76033]
Yvette
Cooper: The regulatory impact assessment published on 14
June 2006 alongside the home
information pack regulations sets out the expected costs and benefits of
home information packs. A copy of this document is in the House
Library.
Estimates of the cost of the components of HIPs in the current market suggest an average cost of around £600 to £700 plus VAT to compile. Most of this cost is not new and is being met at present by both sellers and buyers. Some providers have already said they would offer HIPs at reduced cost or even free.
HIPs are expected to reduce the abortive and duplicated costs to consumers caused by failed transactions which result from survey or valuation inspection findings.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate she has made of the annual number of derogations the Government will grant as a result of information for home information packs not being available at the time of sale. [76068]
Yvette Cooper: The legislation does not provide for the Government to make derogations. The home information pack regulations laid on 14 June 2006 allow for cases where despite all reasonable efforts, certain documents are unavailable or cannot be obtained. In such cases, marketing may begin without those documents. Where documents are temporarily unavailable, efforts to obtain the missing information must continue, with documents added to the pack as soon as they are available. The pack must also make clear what information is missing, why, and what steps are being taken to obtain it.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what assessment she has made of the likely impact of home condition reports contained in home information packs on the market value of low value properties. [76086]
Yvette Cooper: It is important that sellers and buyers should have reliable information about the condition of properties they are considering up front, particularly as this reduces significantly the risk of transaction failure, wasted costs, duplication and unexpected repair costs once the buyer has moved in. The Home Condition Report will bring transparency to the process and ensure that negotiations regarding sale price reflect the condition of the property.
The Government commissioned research in 2000 and 2003 on the potential implications of home information packs (HIPs) for low value and low demand properties. It also consulted in March 2003 on whether there should be special arrangements in such cases. The findings of the research and consultation showed that buyers, sellers and local property professionals felt that HIPs could help the functioning of the market in those areas, and that exempting particular properties or areas of properties could reduce demand and therefore prices even further.
Local Authority Employees (Assaults)
Mr. Betts: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many (a) physical and (b) verbal assaults there have been on local authority employees in each of the last five years, broken down by (i) employment type and (ii) region. [80866]
Mr. Woolas: This information is not held centrally and cannot be collected without a disproportionate cost.
Local Government
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government if she will place in the Library a copy of the letter sent by listing officers to local authority chief executives to which reference was made in ODPM council tax letter 1/2005. [70569]
Mr. Woolas: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 28 June 2006.
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) of 20 January 2006, Official Report, column 1699W, on council tax, when he placed in the Library a copy of the draft letter from the Valuation Office Agency to local authorities on sharing information. [66312]
Mr. Woolas: I have been asked to reply.
The draft letter from the Valuation Office Agency to local authorities on sharing information has now been placed in the Library.
Neighbourhood Management Schemes
James Duddridge: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether she is reviewing the roll-out of neighbourhood management schemes across England; and if she will make a statement. [79233]
Mr. Woolas [holding answer 21 June 2006]: The Government funded Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder programme was established in July 2001 with the creation of 20 Pathfinders with an additional 15 Pathfinders launched in December 2003. Further Government funding for neighbourhood management schemes is included in the neighbourhood element of the Safer and Stronger Communities Fund of Local Area Agreements, enabling 84 local authorities covering the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods to develop and extend neighbourhood management schemes if they wish.
In addition to the 35 Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders, and new initiatives being developed under the neighbourhood element, there are already over 200 other neighbourhood management initiatives, usually set up by local authorities or Local Strategic Partnerships and mostly funded by the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund.
Social Services (Child Removals)
Mr. Gibb: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many children were removed from their parents by social services in each year since 1995. [78338]
Mr. Dhanda: I have been asked to reply.
The numbers of children who have been removed from their parents as a result of an Emergency Protection Order (EPO) being issued by the family courts, in response to applications from local authority social/children’ services, are shown in the following table. The table shows the number of children who started to be looked after following the making of EPOs during each of the years ending 31 March 1995 to 31 March 2005.
| Children who started to be looked after during the years ending 31 March 1995 to 31 March 2005 by legal status on starting( 1, 2, 3) | |
| Emergency protection order | Number |
| (1)
Only the first occasion on which a child started to be looked after in
the year has been
counted. (2) Historical data may differ from older publications. This is mainly due to the implementation of amendments and corrections sent by some local authorities after the publication date of previous materials. (3) To maintain the confidentiality of each individual child, the data are rounded to the nearest 100 if they exceed 1,000 and to the nearest 10 otherwise. Numbers from 1 to 5 inclusive are suppressed and replaced by a hyphen (-). Zero (0) is shown only when the number submitted was zero. As a consequence of our rounding and suppression figures may not sum to the total. (4) Figures are taken from the SSDA903 return which before 1997-98 and since 2003-04 covered all looked after children. (5) Figures are derived from the SSDA903 one-third sample survey between 1997-98 and 2002-03. | |
Swindon Borough Council
Mr. Wills: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many meetings officials from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister held with Swindon borough councillors in (a) 2003, (b) 2004 and (c) 2005. [80859]
Angela E. Smith: The information is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Work and Pensions
Benefit Delivery Centres
Mr. Boswell: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on progress on the implementation programmes for benefit delivery centres. [76509]
Mr.
Jim Murphy: The administration of Jobcentre Plus is a
matter for the Chief Executive of Jobcentre
Plus, Lesley Strathie. I have asked her to provide the hon. Member with
the information
requested.
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question on the progress of the implementation programmes for Benefit Delivery Centres. This is something that falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus.
The roll out of the Benefit Delivery Centres is expected to be completed by March 2008.
The move to Benefit Delivery Centres involves the development of detailed implementation plans for each site. These include the steps required to move work from the sites currently processing claims to the new Benefit Delivery Centre to ensure the minimum disruption to performance and customer service.
The first site, in Wellingborough, went live as a Benefit Delivery Centre in April 2006. We are considering the lessons learned from the implementation of that site to inform the main phase of delivery, planned to start in the autumn.
In the interim, to ensure we maintain optimum levels of customer service, we are continuing to deliver benefits from our existing network of offices. Our strategy, in advance of full implementation, is to concentrate work at fewer sites where this is possible. In the last two years we have already reduced the number of processing sites by around 50 per cent. This allows us to move more quickly to the model of Benefit Delivery Centres, which builds upon an improved, more consistent level of customer service.
I hope this is helpful.
Benefits
Harry Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what support the benefits system provides for those who become carers of vulnerable people after they themselves have passed retirement age; whether this differs from those who become carers before their age of retirement; what plans he has to change the system to improve the treatment of age carers who are over retirement age; and if he will make a statement. [66763]
Mrs. McGuire: Carers have equal access to the full range of income maintenance social security benefits, whether they are above or below state pension age. In particular, they are able to apply equally for carer’s allowance, which is an income maintenance benefit for people who regularly spend at least 35 hours a week caring for a severely disabled person.
Lower-income people of pension age may receive pension credit in addition to their state pension. Pension credit recipients are guaranteed a weekly income of £114.05 for a single person or £174.05 for a couple. Carers entitled to carer’s allowance have the carer’s additional amount, currently £26.35 a week, included in the assessment of their pension credit. For both working age and pension age carers entitled to carer’s allowance, additional help is available through the carer premium, also set at £26.35 a week, in housing benefit and council tax benefit. This premium is available to working age carers in income support and income-based jobseeker’s allowance.
The
overlapping benefits rules, which mean that two income maintenance
benefits cannot be paid together, also apply equally to carers below
state pension age
receiving benefits such as incapacity benefit and to pension age carers
receiving basic state
pension.
We have no plans to change these arrangements.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what average time was taken to rate a claim for (a) jobseeker's allowance and (b) income support in (i) Peterborough constituency and (ii) the Peterborough city council area in each of the last 10 years. [76621]
Mr. Jim Murphy: The administration of Jobcentre Plus is a matter for the Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus, Lesley Strathie. I have asked her to provide the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Lesley Strathie, dated 28 June 2006:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question regarding the average time taken to rate a claim for (a) Jobseeker's Allowance and (b) Income Support in (i) Peterborough constituency and (ii) the Peterborough city council area in each of the last 10 years. This falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of Jobcentre Plus.
Our measure of the time taken to process a claim is the actual average clearance time. Prior to April 2006 the Jobcentre Plus internal key management indicator for processing claims for Income Support (IS) and Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) was 12 working days. Since April 2006, these key management indicators have become official Jobcentre Plus targets; the IS clearance target is 11 days and the JSA clearance target is 12 days.
I am unable to provide information for the last 10 years as our system only holds data from April 2002 when Jobcentre Plus began operations.
For the period April 2002 to March 2005, information is available for the old Peterborough Jobcentre Plus district, which included the constituency of Peterborough and the Peterborough city council area. From April 2005 information is only available for the whole of Cambridgeshire.
The available information is in the following tables.
| Claim processing times in Peterborough Jobcentre Plus District | |||
| Benefit | Target in days | Actual average clearance time in days | |
| Claim processing times in Cambridgeshire | |||
| Benefit | Target in days | Actual average clearance time in days | |
| Source: Jobcentre Plus Management Information System Programme. | |||
Jobcentre Plus is transforming the service it provides by making it available via the telephone, via the internet and through the personal service offered to people in Jobcentre Plus offices. We are also committed to implementing a major efficiency programme to deliver headcount savings.
On 30 January we launched a national action plan designed to reduce clearance times. The plan focuses on providing delivery units with specific tools and best practice guidance to enable them to improve their performance. Senior operational managers provided a formal assurance at the end of February that they were complying with all elements of the national action plan.
The chief operating officer is monitoring performance very closely and is addressing performance variations in benefit clearance times in specific locations and the actions required to clear backlogs. It should be acknowledged that concentrating on backlogs of work may initially cause average clearance timesto rise.
I hope this is helpful.
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