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16 Oct 2009 : Column 1104W—continued
Departmental Public Expenditure
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath of 9 September 2009, Official Report, columns 1937-8W, on schools: finance, which individual programmes are included in the category Positive Activities for Young People Programmes; and how much funding has been allocated to each such programme. [293269]
Ms Diana R. Johnson [holding answer 15 October 2009]: In the reply given on 9 September 2009, Official Report, column 1936W, by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools, we offered a figure of £94 million for the expenditure in 2010-11.
The Positive Activities for Young People Programme is now a single programme which is paid to local authorities as part of their Area Based Grant.
Pupil Exclusions: Disadvantaged
Michael Gove: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what the rate of permanent exclusion from school was in each income deprivation affecting children index decile of deprivation in the last year for which figures are available. [293608]
Dawn Primarolo: Information on the rate of permanent exclusion in each income deprivation affecting children index decile of deprivation, according to the location of the school, is shown in the table.
Schools: Standards
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families pursuant to the answer of 24 June 2009, Official Report, column 996W, on schools: standards, what the estimated cost of collecting the information would be; which data protection rules would be contravened by collecting it; on what basis the estimate of £90 million was made; how much of the £90 million was paid by his Department; and from which budgetary headings the money came. [293542]
Dawn Primarolo: We do not hold the information on each individual adviser or their cost for 2008-09. We estimate that the cost of collecting this would exceed the cost threshold of £750 applicable to central Government. Furthermore, to provide information on individual advisers would infringe the rights of an individual's personal information and therefore be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998.
The estimate of £90 million was derived from information collected through the Department's review of its field forces in 2008. It is difficult to provide a precise breakdown of expenditure on each of the field forces, since they are delivered through a range of mechanisms-some are directly contracted (so the cost of advisers is incorporated within a larger contract), some are located in Government Offices as secondees, and some are employed directly by DCSF or its NDPBs. The £90 million includes some funding from other Government Departments in the delivery of improvement support where there is shared policy interest. It is difficult to disaggregate the proportion paid by this Department.
The Department's contribution forms a proportion of its allocation from the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).
Schools: Vetting
Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether (a) hon. Members, (b) Ministers and (c) elected members of a local education authority will be required to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority before visiting a school under the provisions of the Vetting and Barring Scheme; and if he will make a statement. [288813]
Dawn Primarolo [holding answer 21 July 2009]: The hon. Member will have received a copy of the Secretary of State's letter of 31 July, which addresses all the points raised in this parliamentary question. I attach a copy for ease of reference.
Letter from Ed Balls, dated 31 July 2009 :
The new Vetting and Barring scheme as it applies to Members of Parliament and schools
I am writing to all Members of Parliament (MPs) representing constituencies in England and Wales about the new Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), with a courtesy copy to MPs representing constituencies in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Following recent questions in the House, which were prompted by some misleading media coverage, I want to make clear how the VBS will operate and, in particular, how it will apply to MPs when they work for schools, but not when they make visits to schools without working for those schools. (The same principles would also apply in relation to work for children's centres.)
As you may be aware the VBS is being introduced in response to a recommendation from the independent Bichard Inquiry, established following the Soham murders by school caretaker Ian Huntley. Sir Michael Bichard's Inquiry into these tragic events found that there was more we could reasonably do so that people who have already shown they pose a threat to children are prevented from taking up positions in schools. The VBS is designed to achieve precisely this in relation to schools.
All new entrants to the schools workforce will have to register under the VBS from November 2010. For those who were already doing such work before November 2010, starting with those who have never been subject to CRB checks, we will phase in registration between 2011 and 2015.
In the schools context, people who are not members of the schools workforce will be required to register with the VBS for one of only two reasons. The first reason is because they frequently work for a particular school or schools. Conversely, someone who just visits schools, for example to watch a school play or attend a prize-giving, to meet the head teacher or to observe a lesson in a classroom, will not have to register under the VBS.
MPs will therefore not have to register with the VBS in the course of their normal duties such as visits to schools or children's centres in their constituencies. The only circumstances in which they would have to register are if, for example, an MP has arranged to go into schools to, say, teach politics to groups of pupils once a month for several successive months, as this means they would be classed as working for schools. Anyone doing this as paid work would have to pay a one-off charge of £64 to register under the VBS, but if an MP is doing this as a volunteer the £64 fee would not apply.
The second and only other situation, in the schools context, in which people who are not members of the school and children's workforce will have to register with the VBS is by virtue of the particular post and decision-making powers they hold. For this reason some local councillors and council officers will be required to register, including all Lead Members for Children and Directors of Children's Services. On this basis, I and my DCSF ministerial team plan to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority as soon as registration starts in 2010.
Further information about the VBS can be found at www.isa-gov.org.uk . In addition, I also enclose a note setting out the facts in response to some of the myths about the VBS which have appeared recently in the media.
My Department, which leads for the Government in relation to policy on the safeguarding of children, is the main funder of the VBS together with the Department of Health, which has the parallel lead for vulnerable adults. The VBS in England and Wales is being delivered for DCSF and for the Department of Health by the Home Office, which also leads for the Government on criminal records information.
I am copying this letter to Gwenda Thomas AM, Deputy Minister for Social Services in the Welsh Assembly Government.
Communities and Local Government
Analytical Services Research Programme
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what research projects have been commissioned by his Department's (a) Analytical Services Research Programme and (b) Communications Directorate in the last 24 months. [292704]
Barbara Follett: Details of research projects commissioned from the Analytical Services Research Programme are available from our Research Database (RD) at:
The database provides information on projects commissioned by Communities and Local Government and predecessor departments going back to 30 November 2001. This includes the subject, contractor and cost of each research commission.
For details of research commissioned by the Communications Directorate I refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 2 June 2008, Official Report, column 538-39W, as amended on 9 July 2008, Official Report, column 9MC. From that date onward all research commission by Communications is on the Research Database.
Atherton Associates
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether officials of his Department have met representatives of Atherton Associates in the last 18 months. [292826]
Barbara Follett: This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Building Alterations
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what changes to permitted development rights which have restricted the rights of property owners to extend a dwelling have been made in the last 36 months. [292809]
Mr. Ian Austin: The Government introduced a new regime of permitted development rights for householders in October 2008. This replaced the previous volume- based limits approach with one which sets clearer limits on the size and position of household developments that can benefit from permitted development rights.
The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Amendment) (No. 2) (England) Order 2008 allows householders to extend their properties without the need for planning permission subject to the limitations and conditions that are set out in the order.
Charities
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what grants his Department made to charitable organisations in each of the last five years. [292654]
Barbara Follett: A complete list of funding to charitable institutions over the past five years could be made available only at a disproportionate cost.
However, I refer the hon. Member to the list of charitable institutions that this Department funded in 2008-09 as published in our resource accounts on 14 July 2009 (HC449, pages 17-21) and also those funded in 2007-08 as published in the departmental annual report in May 2008 (Cm 7394).
Civil Service Compensation Scheme
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether the proposed changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme will have implications for compensation schemes in (a) local government and (b) non-departmental public bodies overseen by his Department. [292664]
Barbara Follett: Proposed changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme will have no implications for the compensation scheme available to local government employees or for NDPBs who have separate provisions.
Community Development Foundation
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what funding his Department is providing to the Community Development Foundation in 2009-10; and what the (a) function and (b) purpose of the foundation is. [292579]
Barbara Follett: Communities and Local Government are providing £1,706,000 in grant in aid to our NDPB the Community Development Foundation in 2009-10. CDF's charitable objects are: to develop the capacity and skills of members of socially and economically or socially disadvantaged communities in such a way that they are better able to identify, and help meet, their needs and to participate more fully in society.
The aims of the Community Development Foundation are to maintain contact with grassroots experience, through consultancy and managed programmes and projects, links with individual practitioners, and indirectly through collaborative work with partner organisations; identify transferable good practice, through research, evaluation and collaborative activity; advise policy-makers and disseminate good practice, through policy work, training and conferences, publications and consultancy.
Council Housing: Construction
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many council homes he expects to be built in each year under the local authority new build programme. [293000]
Mr. Ian Austin: The housing pledge, a centrepiece of our building Britain's future plan, announced an extra £1.5 billion to build new houses over this year and next. Funds from this pledge have been earmarked to support direct development by local authorities, to add to the £100 million already announced in the Budget.
Round 1 of the local authority new build programme announced in September resulted in 49 councils being awarded funding to build 217 schemes across the country providing 2,174 new homes. Bidding in Round 2 closes at the end of October.
We expect the programme to provide around 3,500 new homes, completed in 2010-11 and 2011-12.
Council Housing: Finance
Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what his most recent estimate is of the revenue raised by local authorities from reducing their council tax discount on empty homes; and whether this revenue will (a) continue to be kept by local authorities after the 2011-12 settlement and (b) be taken into account in the calculation of their tax-base for the purposes of allocating central government grant. [292891]
Barbara Follett: As at October 2008, reductions to council tax discounts for empty homes generated an annual additional revenue of £104 million over England. "Additional revenue" refers to the extra amount raised by applying a discount smaller than 50 per cent. We expect to calculate the council tax projections for the 2011-12 settlement based on the Council Tax Base (CTB) returns that authorities supply in 2008, 2009 and 2010. These will take into account the reduction in council tax discount on empty homes.
Council Housing: Tenants
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what estimate he has made of the number of families required to move home by a local authority following the expiry of the right to statutory succession to a local authority property in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement. [292668]
Mr. Ian Austin: No estimate has been made.
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