Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-103)
MS ANNE
KIRKHAM AND
MR SIMON
LLEWELLYN
5 MARCH 2007
Q100 Emily Thornberry: At the moment,
if major works are done through a variety of different pots of
money, including PFI, it is capped at 10,000. If major works are
done through funding by an ALMO there is no cap. Will ministers
be looking at possibly putting "ALMO" into the bit of
legislation that stops those leaseholders being charged more than
£10,000?
Ms Kirkham: Ministers are looking
at a wide range of things, but in terms of why PFI is seen as
different currently to ALMOs is that the capping relates to specific
programmes that are locally and estate specific, which by their
nature have looked to be much broader regeneration initiatives
rather than simply to getting improvements to property. Under
PFI, although the capping is there, the provision for providing
the resources is something that the local authorities themselves
have to provide; it is not provided out of the costs of the PFI
credit.
Q101 Chair: Has there been an analysis
of what the costs would be to the Treasury were capping to be
introduced across the board?
Ms Kirkham: We have done a range
of estimates, but as we said at the very beginning, a lot of it
will depend on the assumptions you make. The number of leaseholders
who might be affected is from survey data is not from individual
local authorities, but to do that calculation it depends on estimating
what you think the cost of works is going to be across the country.
Q102 Chair: Have you done that?
Ms Kirkham: We have done some
estimates of those, and we have come up, depending on the assumptions,
with quite a range of numbers. I do not have those figures in
my head at the moment.
Q103 Chair: Would you be able to
give them to us?
Ms Kirkham: I see no reason why
we could not provide those figures.
Chair: That would be very helpful, with
the assumptions, obviously. Thank you very much indeed.
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