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19 Mar 2008 : Column 1207W—continued
Lichfield District Council: Council Tax
Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the ratio of central Government funding council tax revenue for Lichfield district council was in each of the last eight years. [193728]
John Healey: The ratios between central Government funding and council tax requirement for Lichfield district council are shown in the following table.
| Central Government funding (£000) | Council tax requirement (£000) | Ratio | |
| Source: Communities and Local Government Revenue Outturn (RO) returns | |||
Local authority council tax requirement is the council tax available to finance revenue expenditure, not council tax collected.
Central Government funding is defined here as the sum of Formula grant (Revenue Support Grant and redistributed non-domestic rates) and Specific grants inside Aggregate External Finance (AEF), i.e. revenue grants paid for council's core services.
Figures exclude grants outside AEF (i.e. where funding is not for authorities' core services, but is passed to a third party, for example, rent allowances and rebates), capital grants, funding for the local authorities' housing management responsibilities and those grant programmes (such as European funding) where authorities are simply one of the recipients of funding paid towards an area.
Comparisons across years may not be valid owing to changing local authority responsibilities.
Local Authorities: Contract Compliance
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what guidance her Department and its predecessors have issued to local authorities on (a) misfeasance, (b) nonfeasance and (c) malfeasance in the last five years. [193996]
John Healey: No guidance has been issued on these matters in the last five years.
Local Government Finance: Landfill Tax
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether payments will be made to local authorities over each of the next three years in relation to the costs of the landfill tax. [193780]
John Healey: The Government worked closely with local authorities to identify the cost pressures on local authorities resulting from their waste management responsibilities over the next three financial years, including the pressure created by the increase in the landfill tax escalator announced in Budget 2007, in the context of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007. These were taken into account in the Formula Grant settlement for 2008-09 to 2010-11. This funding is not hypothecated to a particular service or in respect to a particular cost.
Local Government Finance: Newcastle-under-Lyme
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government at what level within her Department the misallocation of Local Authority Business Growth Incentive funds to Newcastle-under-Lyme was authorised. [194592]
John Healey: Payments under the Local Authority Business Growth Incentives scheme (LABGI) are made by means of a grant determination under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003. Each grant determination is made by a Minister and signed on his or her behalf by a senior civil servant.
Local Government: Pay
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the average change in local government employee wages was in each year since 1996-97; and what the cost of the local government wage bill was in each of those years. [193782]
John Healey: Information on local government wages is not held centrally. Information on local government pay is published in “Local Government Finance Statistics”, at:
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what role her Department has in relation to the national pay review of local authority officers. [194821]
John Healey: National pay agreements are negotiated in the National Joint Council between trade unions and the local government employers. I am not aware of any national pay review of local authority officers.
London Thames Gateway Development Corporation: Public Appointments
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what role her Department has played in the appointment of individuals to the planning committee of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation. [193681]
Caroline Flint: The London Thames Gateway Development Corporation Planning Committee currently consists of nine members. Seven of these members are members of the Corporation Board. They were appointed to the Planning Committee by the chairman of the Corporation.
Two members of the Planning Committee are co-opted and are not members of the Corporation Board. They were also appointed by the chairman of the board with the consent of the Secretary of State, following advertising the positions, shortlisting and interviews. The Department approved the design of the appointment process. The process itself, including the shortlisting and interviews, was run by the Corporation.
London Thames Gateway Development Corporation: Public Participation
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what role (a) her Department or its predecessor, (b) her Department's agencies and (c) the Government Office for London played in the appointment of Mr. Alan Clark to the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation. [193784]
Caroline Flint: Mr. Alan Clark was appointed to the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation Board by the chairman of the Corporation following an appointment process involving advertising the position, short listing and interview. The Secretary of State gave her consent to the appointment following this process. The process was approved by the Department and run by the Corporation itself.
Non-domestic Rates: Churches
Harry Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what her estimate is of the rateable value of all churches and other places of worship in England which are exempt from business rates. [194394]
John Healey: Valuation officers do not value properties that are exempt from rates.
Non-Domestic Rates: Crossrail
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for how many years the supplementary business rate for Crossrail on London businesses will last. [194343]
John Healey: “Business rate supplements: a White Paper” makes clear that it will be for individual authorities, including the GLA, to decide how long their business rate supplements would last. The proposed duration will be one of the matters the GLA will need to cover in its plans which will be the basis for statutory consultation. The Mayor wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport setting out his thinking and I refer the hon. Member to the written statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport on 26 November 2007, Official Report, columns 133-4WS.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government which public authorities will bear the liability of any cost over-runs on the Crossrail scheme; and what liability London firms paying the supplementary business rate will have. [194345]
John Healey: General questions on funding of Crossrail are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, and I refer the hon. Member to the written statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport on 26 November 2007, Official Report, columns 133-34WS, and the answer given by her to the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) on 30 October 2007, Official Report, column 1294W.
The liability of any businesses paying a business rate supplement, including businesses in London paying a supplement as part of the funding package for Crossrail, would not be able to exceed the national upper limit of 2p per pound of rateable value specified in “Business rate supplements: a White Paper”. The GLA and any other authority that wishes to levy a supplement, would, as the White Paper sets out, be required to set out the way in which it would deal with differences between planned and outrun expenditure as part of its statutory consultation on a proposed supplement.
Non-domestic Rates: Valuation
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what her timetable is for the publication of valuation information arising from the revaluation undertaken for non-domestic rates calculation in 2010. [193961]
John Healey: Draft 2010 rateable values will be published in the autumn of 2009, with final valuations being published on 1 April 2010.
Ordnance Survey
Mr. Prisk: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (1) whether private companies were consulted on Ordnance Survey’s draft revised Public Task before it was approved; [193729]
(2) whether the (a) GI Panel and (b) Association for Geographic Information were consulted on Ordnance Survey’s draft revised Public Task before it was approved. [Official Report, 26 March 2008, Vol. 474, c. 2MC.] [193730]
Mr. Iain Wright: In April 2007, Ministers from the Department asked Ordnance Survey and the Shareholder Executive to work together to prepare a more precise articulation of Ordnance Survey’s Public Task, as set out in the Ordnance Survey Framework Document 2004. This work was undertaken between April and June 2007 in preparation for the publication of a revised Framework Document for Ordnance Survey.
As has been the case with the preparation of previous versions of the Ordnance Survey Framework Document, there were no external consultations on the Public Task, which fundamentally articulates that defined in such successive Ordnance Survey Framework Document since 1990, but in a more precise and comprehensive way.
Planning
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what plans her Department has for independent assessment of national policy statements on planning. [194021]
John Healey: The Government are committed to ensuring that national policy statements are subject to public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny before they are designated. It is for Parliament to determine the nature of the scrutiny process. However, we have encouraged the House to set up arrangements which draw on the expertise of the four relevant departmental Select Committees for the purpose.
I am discussing this issue with the Leader of the House and the Chairs of the four Select Committees, with a view to developing recommendations which can be put to House in due course.
Planning Inspectorate
Mr. Andrew Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government if she will review the scope and powers of the Planning Inspectorate. [194805]
Mr. Iain Wright: The Planning Inspectorate was subject to an end to end review in 2003; the published report is available in the Library of the House. Since then, both the Barker and Eddington reviews have looked at the effectiveness of the planning system as a whole of which PINS forms an integral part. The Planning Bill currently progressing through Parliament draws on all of those earlier reviews in proposing enabling legislation to make the appeals system more proportionate, efficient and customer based.
Planning: EU Law
Mr. David Anderson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether national policy statements under the provision of the Planning Bill will be required to be assessed under the (a) EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive and (b) EU Habitats Directive; and if she will make a statement. [191872]
John Healey: All national policy statements will be subject to appraisal of the sustainability of the policies they contain. Some will also be required to be assessed under the regulations which transpose the EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive and the EU Habitats Directive. The Government will carry out assessments in all cases where they are required by the regulations, as part of the appraisal of sustainability.
Public Lavatories: Closures
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many municipal public conveniences have (a) closed and (b) commenced charging for use since 1997. [194026]
John Healey: The provision and maintenance of toilets in public places is at the discretion of local authorities who have, under section 87 of the Public Health Act 1936, a power to provide public conveniences, but no duty to do so. For this reason, the information requested is not centrally held by Communities and Local Government.
Recreation Spaces
Tom Levitt: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what proportion of town green applications remained undecided after (a) two and (b) five years on the latest date for which figures are available. [194854]
Jonathan Shaw: I have been asked to reply.
This information is not held centrally. However, a survey of commons registration authorities in England was undertaken in September 2007. Allowing for authorities which did not respond, we estimate that 14 applications made in 2003 and 79 applications made in 2006 had not been determined by the date of the survey.
Tom Levitt: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the average time taken for processing a town green application was in the latest period for which figures are available. [194855]
Jonathan Shaw: I have been asked to reply.
This information is not held centrally. However, according to the findings of a survey of commons registration authorities in England, undertaken in September 2007, the average time for processing town and village green applications made under section 13(b) of the Commons Registration Act 1965 was 16 months.
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