| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
25 Mar 2008 : Column 10W—continued
The Continuous Recording System data for 2006-07 show (based on returns from registered social landlords and local authorities) the total market value of homes sold under Social HomeBuy, Open Market HomeBuy and new build HomeBuy/Shared Ownership was £1,628 million.
Julia Goldsworthy: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government when she will publish her Department’s evaluation of Social HomeBuy. [196628]
Mr. Iain Wright: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 10 March 2008, Official Report, column 64W.
Lichfield District Council: Local Government Finance
Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how much was spent by Lichfield district council in each of the last four financial years; and what revenue the council received from (a) Government grants, (b) (i) council tax and (ii) non-domestic rates, (c) the sale of assets and (d) other sources in each of those years. [193727]
John Healey: The information requested is shown in the following table.
| £000 | ||||
| 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | |
| Source: Communities and local government revenue and capital outturn returns | ||||
Revenue figures are produced on a non-financial reporting standard 17 (FRS17) basis.
Government grants within revenue expenditure are defined here as the sum of revenue support grant and specific grants inside aggregate external finance (AEF), i.e. revenue grants paid for council's core services.
Other within revenue expenditure includes: transfers and adjustments; appropriations to/from revenue reserves; collection fund surpluses/deficits; and community charge amounts transferred to/from collection fund.
Local authority council tax requirement is the council tax available to finance revenue expenditure, not council tax collected.
Revenue 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: Debt Collection
Robert Neill: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what guidance has been issued to local authorities on the use of bailiffs to collect civil debts owed by residents to them. [191660]
Mr. Dhanda: No such guidance has been issued by Communities and Local Government. On 18 March 2008, the Ministry of Justice published its response to the consultation paper “Regulation of Enforcement Agents”. The response recommended that bailiffs in England and Wales should be regulated by one body, the Security Industry Authority. The consultation paper and the response are available on the Ministry of Justice’s website at:
Social Rented Housing: Construction
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many social rented properties the Housing Corporation plans to build in the 2006 to 2008 financial period; how many bids it has received for this period; what steps it is taking to encourage further bids; and in which areas fewer bids have been received than are required. [193724]
Mr. Iain Wright:
Over the period 2006-08 we set the Housing Corporation targets to deliver an additional 49,000 social rented homes and 35,000 low cost home
ownership homes. These homes will be provided through new investment during the two years and through commitments already within the Housing Corporation's affordable housing programme.
During the 2006-08 bidding round, the Housing Corporation received bids totalling £8 billion for 160,000 units. They made allocations of over £4 billion to schemes to provide 97,000 homes, some of which will not be delivered until after 2008. During the course of the programme some schemes will be subject to delay. Under the terms of their partnership agreements with the Housing Corporation, housing associations and other developers are obliged to offer replacement schemes in these circumstances. In addition, as part of the Corporation's normal in year management of their programme, bids for deliverable schemes can be submitted at any time. This helps to ensure that national targets are met and resources committed.
Health
Accident and Emergency Departments
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many and what percentage of the population lives more than 20 miles from an accident and emergency department in each primary care trust area in England. [195014]
Mr. Bradshaw: The information requested is not available centrally.
Baby Care Units: Inspections
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the Healthcare Commission inspects neo-natal units. [195321]
Mr. Bradshaw: The Healthcare Commission (HC) may inspect neonatal units as part of the annual health check assessment of the national health service.
As part of the HC’s annual health check, NHS organisations are required to declare the extent of their compliance with core standards, which are specified by the Government in “Standards for Better Health”. The declarations are made annually.
Following the submission of declarations, the HC inspects approximately 20 per cent. of trusts to validate the data.
The Department has funded via the HC a project to develop and implement a national neonatal audit programme. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has been commissioned to take this project forward over the next two years, and are expected to provide data on the first year shortly.
Blood Transfusion Services
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what criteria are used to assess a geographical area as having a poor level of blood collection as outlined in the review of the National Blood Service Strategy. [195124]
Dawn Primarolo: The review team, consisting of NHS Blood and Transplant, and supported by McKinsey and Co., used two criteria to assess the level of blood collection performance in a geographical area: donor penetration and donation frequency. Donor penetration is measured by the percentage of blood donors in the eligible population. Donor frequency is measured by the number of times donors give blood in a given period.
Blood: v CJD
Sandra Gidley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the level of risk of transmission of vCJD infection posed by blood transfusions. [194324]
Dawn Primarolo: The Department produced two assessments of the risk of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vCJD) transmission via blood transfusion in 2002: “Exclusion of blood component recipients from donation: the impact on potential vCJD transmission risks”, and “On vCJD transmission through blood components: reconciling modelled risks with case evidence”.
The Department published a preface to these two documents, “Risk Assessments for vCJD and Blood Transfusion: Preface to Papers Produced by Dept of Health Analysts”, in June 2006. This addresses the implications of the first three cases of vCJD transmission via blood transfusion. Copies of these three documents have been placed in the Library and can also be found on the Department's website at:
Sandra Gidley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people have developed vCJD infection following a blood transfusion in each year since 1990. [194325]
Dawn Primarolo: There have been four cases of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD) infection associated with blood transfusion, three of whom died of clinical vCJD, the fourth died from an unrelated medical condition. These patients received blood transfusions between 1996 and 1999, from donors who subsequently developed clinical vCJD. Since 1999 the Department has put a number of precautionary measures in place to prevent the possible transmission of vCJD by blood transfusion.
Bridlington Hospital
Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent representations he has received on Bridlington hospital; and if he will make a statement. [196728]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: In the last six months, the Department has received a number of written representations from members of the public regarding the consultations ‘A Future Role for Bridlington Hospital’ and ‘A Future for Maternity Services’ at the Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust.
There have also been a small number of representations from hon. Members, Bridlington Town Council, the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee of the
North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire councils as well as the Independent Reconfiguration Panel.
The Department received a 38,168 signature petition opposing changes to services at Bridlington hospital on 25 March 2008.
Childbirth
Mr. Amess:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the survival rate of children born at 22 to 25 weeks gestation was in the UK in the most recent period for which figures are available; how many were (a) born alive and (b) still-born; how many subsequently (i) survived and (ii) died; when his Department last undertook
an evidence review on the issue that drew on (A) UK and (B) international research; and if he will make a statement. [189017]
Ann Keen: The information requested is shown in the following tables. We have commissioned the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) to take forward a programme of systematic reviews of the research evidence to identify and promote the key interventions that are most likely to contribute to meeting our target for infant mortality. The topics are likely to include the major medical causes of infant mortality (pre-term birth, congenital anomalies and sudden unexplained death in infancy) as well as generic health interventions.
| Live births and infant deaths by gestational age at birth: babies born in England and Wales, 2005 | |||||||||
| Births (number) | Deaths (number) | Rates per 1,000 live births (percentage) | |||||||
| Gestational age (weeks) | Live births | Under 7 days | Between 7 and 28 days | 28 days and over but under 1 year | Deaths under 1 year | Under 7 days | Between 7 and 28 days | 28 days and over but under one year | Deaths under 1 year |
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |