§ Mr. Lathamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will make a statement on his intentions regarding the full use of capital receipts by local authorities for capital schemes; and whether he has any plans for clawing back, or redistributing, any proportion of receipts from those local authorities which wish to utilise 100 per cent. of their capital receipts.
§ Mr. WaldegraveThe Government are keen to secure full use by local authorities of all capital resources, including those deriving from capital receipts.
From the inception of the capital control system in 1981–82, we have taken 50 per cent. of the forecast level of most types of housing receipt into 5asic allocations, leaving the remaining 50 per cent. for use at local discretion. For 1983–84 we have extended this arrangement to non-housing receipts. As a transitional measure we have allowed authorities to continue to use 100 per cent. of accumulated non-housing receipts in 1983–84 and have given additional allocations to more than 40 authorities whose plans for using new receipts arising in the year were affected by the change in the rules.