Communities and Local Government response
to the CLG Committee's supplementary questions on the Winter Supplementary
Estimates 2007-08 (EST 07)
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 £29 million
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; and
— 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 London, Ministers therefore decided to make a capital contribution
from Departmental budgets to the Olympics.
3. A funding package of £405 million
from the Department was agreed for infrastructure and regeneration
costs associated with the Olympics. This required changes to proposed
levels of capital funding across six 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 DEL statements
accompanying the relevant supplementary estimate where it has
taken place in-year.
5. Of the total £405 million, the ALMO
programme contributed £29 million 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 £15 million and £14 million 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.
March 2008
Annex A
SR04—PROFILE
OF £405 MILLION
SAVINGS TO
BUDGETS
| £ millions |
2005-06 | 2006-07
| 2007-08 | Totals
|
| Other Growth Areas |
| | 10 | 10
|
| Housing Corporation ADP/Regional Housing Pot
| 6 | 30 | 52
| 88 |
| Regional Housing Pot/local authority allocations
| n/a | 10 | 19
| 29 |
| ALMOs | | 15
| 14 | 29 |
| Thames Gateway | 30 | 70
| 35 | 135 |
| English Partnerships | |
30 | 30 | 60 |
| Total | 36 |
155 | 160 | 351
|
| End Year Flexibility | |
11 | 43 | 54 |
| Overall Total | 36
| 166 | 203 |
405 |
| |
| | |
TRANSFERS TO
DCMS AS SET
OUT IN
SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES
| £ millions | 2005-06
| 2006-07 | 2007-08
| Totals |
| Pre main estimates |
| 77.000 | 175.000 |
|
| Winter Supplementaries | 30.000
| 24.300 | 80.451 |
|
| Spring Supplementaries | 6.000
| 12.249 | |
|
| Total | 36.000
| 113.549 | 255.451
| 405.000 |
| |
| | |
| 
