|
COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO THE CLG COMMITTEE'S SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS ON THE WINTER SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES 2007/08
1. This memorandum provides Communities and Local Government's response to the questions set out by the Committee on its Winter Supplementary Estimates by correspondence on 26 February. The Committee asked the Department to:
· to confirm that £29m has been transferred from the Decent Homes ALMO programme to the Olympics, and that this money will not be paid back into the programme · to explain why the decision was taken to reduce the money available to the Decent Homes programme in this way, and whether that £29m could, if it had not been transferred to the Olympics, have been used by ALMOs to fund the decent homes programme · to set out what comparable examples there are either in CLG or in other Government Departments-apart from the well-known Lottery funding examples-of money being transferred out of existing programmes to pay for the Olympics. 2. The Olympics will provide a unique contribution to Communities and
Local Government's policy objectives, by delivering legacy liveability, housing
and employment benefits in one of the most deprived parts of the country. It
will transform commercial interest, and the potential scale of investment in
new jobs and homes, in the Thames Gateway which is a national priority for
regeneration. Following the decision to award the 2012 Olympics to 3. A funding package of £405m from the Department was agreed for infrastructure and regeneration costs associated with the Olympics. This required changes to proposed levels of capital funding across 6 programmes, compared to previous spending plans in the SR04 period. The full analysis for this Department's contributions in the SR04 period is at Annex A - we are unable to comment on the funding contributions of other Department's or the National Lottery. For CSR07 we created a separate spending line for the Olympics prior to the settlement being made. 4. Information on the transfer of our funding to DCMS has been
notified to Parliament in the 5. Of the total £405 million, the ALMO programme contributed £29m over two years, less than 2% of the ALMO budget for this period. This contribution was fixed during the latter half of 2005 during the preparations for the submission of the Department's Main Estimate for 2006-07 when there was a clear expectation that the ALMO programme would be unlikely to utilise all the capital resources available to it over the next two financial years, 2006-07 and 2007-08. That proved to be the case: the budgets for each of these two years were then adjusted downwards by £15m and £14m respectively. This issue is materially different to questions over the treatment and protection of in-year underspends in the Decent Homes programme which were answered at the evidence session. 6. It remains that no ALMO that was spending from the ALMO programme in each of 2006/07 and 2007/08 should have had to reduce its planned total spend as a result of the transfer to the Olympics. The ALMO programme as a whole has been subject to some slippage over 2006-08, and we do not believe that any ALMO's investment programme will have been affected by this transfer. It is our intention to ensure through future Spending Reviews that all established ALMOs will be able to deliver their Decent Homes programmes on the basis of spending plans they agree with the Department.
Communities and Local Government March 2008
ANNEX A SR04 - Profile of £405m savings to budgets
Transfers to DCMS as set out in supplementary estimates
|