| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
26 Nov 2008 : Column 1490W—continued
Departmental Early Retirement
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many employees in her Department took early retirement in each of the last five financial years; and at what total cost. [238963]
Mr. Khan: The following table shows the number of staff who took early retirement from Communities and Local Government, and its predecessors, in the last five financial years along with the associated costs.
| Central Department | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
Departmental Information Officers
Mr. Hunt: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how much was spent on employing press and communications officers in (a) her Department, (b) its non-departmental public bodies and (c) its agencies in each of the last three years. [239681]
Mr. Khan: I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) to the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) on 17 July 2008, Official Report, column 580W.
Information on agencies and non-departmental bodies is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Departmental Manpower
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many (a) special advisers and (b) press officers have been employed by her Department in each year since its inception; and at what cost in each year. [239081]
Mr. Khan: The Government publish on an annual basis the number and the pay bands of special advisers in each Department. I refer the hon. Member to the statement made by my noble Friend, Baroness Ashton of Upholland on 22 July 2008, Official Report, House of Lords, column 150WS.
For the number and cost of press officers, I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave him on 24 November 2008, Official Report, column 1129W.
Departmental Mass Media
Mr. Hunt: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government which keywords or terms her Department has monitored in the media in each of the last three years. [239733]
Mr. Khan: The Department has a contract with an external media agency (Durrants) to search for and cut relevant national newspaper items for inclusion in a daily cuttings pack. A list of keywords is made available to the agency for this purpose. This list is reviewed and updated as necessary on a regular basis. The current list used by the agency has been deposited in the Library, each keyword is accompanied by instructions that help editors only cut relevant items.
Departmental Ministerial Policy Advisors
Mr. Heald: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the cost of provision of Government cars to special advisers in her Department has been in the last 12 months. [238166]
Mr. Khan: Special advisers have no entitlement to an allocated Government car. As temporary civil servants, their travel arrangements are made in accordance with the rules and guidance set out in the Civil Service Management Code and the Department’s staff handbook.
Departmental Pay
Mr. Ancram: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what bonuses were paid by her Department in 2007-08; to which members of staff; and for what purposes. [239672]
Mr. Khan: I refer the hon. Member to the reply my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) gave to the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) on 2 June 2008, Official Report, column 538W.
Departmental Postal Services
Daniel Kawczynski: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether her Department uses the Royal Mail as the primary company for sending its post, parcels and packages. [238120]
Mr. Khan: With the exception of international mail, the Department for Communities and Local Government currently use Royal Mail for the majority of postal services. International mail accounts for less than 1 per cent. of all departmental post and is administered by Corporate Mailing Services (CMS) who are a private company sub-contracted to our facilities management services provider.
Departmental Procurement
Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) of 3 November 2008, Official Report, columns 119-20W, and to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) of 6 October 2008, Official Report, column 303W, on departmental procurement, what payments were made to each of the individual organisations listed in the table placed in the Library during the period when the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister existed as a Government Department. [235870]
Mr. Khan: A table has been placed in the Library showing payments made since 5 May 2006 to those organisations previously listed, in respect of expenses incurred by the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office. The table shows the date on which the expenditure was recorded on the SAP accounting system.
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether there has been any nugatory cost to her Department and its agencies relating to tendered procurement where the tender process has been cancelled prior to the award of the contract in the last three years. [239688]
Mr. Khan: The Department does not hold this information centrally and it could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre has had no cancelled tenders in the last three years.
Fire Service college has only cancelled one tender in the last three years for the National Leadership programme in October 2006. The abortive expenditure is estimated at £2,500 in staff costs.
Planning Inspectorate and Ordnance Survey would only be able to supply this information at disproportionate cost.
Departmental Public Opinion
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how much her Department has spent on (a) focus groups and (b) opinion polls in each year since 1997-98; how much she estimates will be spent on each category in 2008-09; and if she will make a statement. [239043]
Mr. Khan: The data are not held centrally in the format requested. The information relating to previous years is not readily available. Compiling the information would incur disproportionate costs.
Empty Property
Sarah Teather: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent estimate she has made of the number of empty non-residential properties in each local authority area. [240017]
Mr. Iain Wright: The information requested is not held centrally.
Empty Property: Coastal Areas
Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many vacant retail units there were in each principal seaside town in each year for which figures are available; and what proportion of the total retail units in each town this represents. [238919]
John Healey: The information requested is not held centrally.
Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many empty properties there were in each (a) ward and (b) lower layer super output area of each principal seaside town in England in each year for which figures are available, ranked from highest to lowest (i) number of properties and (ii) percentage of total housing stock in each town. [239005]
John Healey: Vacant dwellings statistics at ward level for 2003, 2004 and 2005 are published by the Office for National Statistics in the Housing domain of the Neighbourhood Statistics Service website and can be downloaded at.
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/datasetList.do?JSAllowed=true&;Function=&%24ph=60&Current PageId=60&step=l&CurrentTreeIndex=-1&searchString= &datasetFamilyId=l618&Next.x=10&Next.y=8
Lower super output area level statistics are not currently available.
Empty Property: East of England
Mr. Spring: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many empty homes there are in (a) Suffolk and (b) the East of England. [240000]
Mr. Iain Wright: The following table shows the number of long-term empty dwellings and total empty dwellings in Suffolk and the East of England region as at October 2007.
| Number of long-term empty dwellings (empty for more than six months) | Total number of empty dwellings | |
| Source: Council Taxbase and Council Taxbase Supplementary (CTB1 and CTB1S) returns from local authorities. | ||
Those dwellings vacant for less than six months are more likely to be empty for a short period following a sale and are seen as ‘transactional’ vacant dwellings and are thus a characteristic of the housing market.
It is therefore sometimes more appropriate to look at long term vacancies rather than the total number of vacant dwellings.
Fire Services
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (1) when each regional fire control room outside London is planned to come into operational use; [230313]
(2) what the timescale is for the introduction of regional fire control rooms; and which control rooms will be operational before June 2010. [230541]
Mr. Khan: Our current assumption is that the first three Regional Control Centres in the North East, East Midlands and South West will cut-over in summer 2010 and that the full system will be in place by spring 2012.
As with any project of this nature, we will only have certainty about the timing of these later stages of the project once earlier stages have been completed successfully.
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government with reference to the latest Part 1 business case for FiReControl, what the (a) current control room costs and (b) forecast regional control centre running costs are in each government office region in estimated cash prices during the periods in which the control rooms will go live. [230542]
Mr. Khan:
Current control room costs and forecast RCC running costs are detailed in the following table. Where a region is forecast to incur a net cost,
Communities and Local Government has committed to making a resilience payment.
| £000 | ||||
| Current control room costs | Forecast RCC running costs | Cost/saving | Resilience payment | |
| Notes: 1. All figures in financial year 2006-07 prices 2. Resilience payments subject to periodic review | ||||
Mr. Pickles: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what her most recent estimate is of the cost of delivery of the FiReControl project. [230916]
Mr. Khan: My statement on 26 November 2008 gives the estimated overall costs for delivery of the FiReControl project as £380 million.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |