HC Deb 26 March 1990 vol 170 cc3-7W
Mr. Hannam

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy to take steps to ensure that volunteer carers who are employed by individual disabled people and who have not been introduced to that person by an independent charitable organisation will be exempt from the community charge, provided that they meet the other exemption criteria.

Mr. Chope

The criteria for the exemption of care workers require, inter alia, that the individual is employed to provide care or support to another person and that the employer is either a public authority, a body established for charitable purposes only, or the person receiving care. In this last circumstance I regard it as helpful that the regulations enable a community charges registration officer to have confirmation of the position of the claimant from an independent charitable organisation.

Mr. Brandon-Bravo

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the total net spending and relevant applicable community charge, to levels of spending at standard spending assessment, 10 per cent. and 20 per cent. above standard spending assessment, and the increase or decrease in each case against the currently approved community charge for each charging local authority.

Mr. Chope

I refer my hon. Friend to my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Hayward) on 19 March 1990,Official Report, column 478.

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment for how many local authorities the poll tax is higher than the notional figure used in setting the level which income support beneficiaries are required to pay; what is the median amount by which they are higher; and what is the number and names of those which are lower.

Mr. Chope

The Government do not set a level of community charge which income support beneficiaries are required to pay.

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy when he publishes the poll tax figures for each English district council to publish for each district the amount per capital also due to(a) that district, (b) the county, (c) the amount of each of these offseet by Government grants, (d) the safety net figure per capita plus or minus, (e) the amount per capita that poll tax would have been had

Percentage change adjusted GRE to SSA Per cent. Cash change adjusted GRE to SSA £ million Proportion of population in urban areas Per cent.
Berkshire 12.8 42.696 92.5
Bedfordshire 12.3 30.271 87.1
Oxfordshire 11.7 26.322 77.7

central Government financed 50 per cent. of local Government spending and (f) the per capita gain or loss for the uniform business rate.

Mr. Chope

No.

Mr. David Nicholson

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the estimated total amounts of spending in 1989–90 and in 1990–91, and the percentage increase for(a) each English shire county and (b) each shire district within Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire.

Mr. Chope

I intend to place a summary of the information returned from local authorities in the Library of the House after information has been received from all authorities.

Mr. Cohen

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he proposes to introduce regulations which ensure that a carer who resides part-time in his or her home and the remainder of the time in the home of the person being cared for pays only one poll tax liability; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Chope

The Community Charges (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No. 2) Regulations 1989 came into force on 28 December 1989. Regulations 62 of the regulations provides that no standard community charge will be payable on a property where the owner has moved to live in another place for the purpose of giving personal care and the property has been unoccupied for less than 12 months. Charging authorities have the discretion to extend the period of relief.

Mr. Ward

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will review the conditions for the imposition of the standard community charge on a former home which the owner has not be able to sell within the present three-month limit.

Mr. Chope

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) on 21 March 1990,Official Report, columns 658-59.

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list, in order of percentage loss or gain, the grant-related expenditure for 1989–90 against the standard spending assessment for 1990–91 for all English counties; what is the cost change between the two; and if he will list for each the proportion of the population living in urban areas.

Mr. Chope

The information requested is shown in the table. The proportion of the population living in urban areas is calculated from data in the 1981 Census publication "Key Statistics for Urban Areas" which contains a definition of urban areas. Similar data are not readily available for district councils or London boroughs.

Percentage change adjusted GRE to SSA Per cent. Cash change adjusted GRE to SSA £ million Proportion of population in urban areas Per cent.
Hertfordshire 11.5 49.255 93.5
Hampshire 11.3 76.408 90.6
Isle of Wight 11.0 6.249 84.2
Buckinghamshire 10.9 31.902 86.1
Essex 10.9 74.691 89.2
East Sussex 10.3 30.401 87.7
Surrey 10.3 41.580 91.4
Kent 10.2 71.279 86.7
West Sussex 9.1 26.854 87.4
Cleveland 9.0 27.833 97.0
Cambridgeshire 8.5 25.007 79.2
Avon 8.4 35.031 92.8
Northamptonshire 7.8 21.531 82.1
Somerset 7.7 16.111 65.1
Cornwall 7.5 16.330 64.6
Wiltshire 7.4 18.623 75.8
Cumbria 7.3 16.721 72.3
Dorset 7.1 19.283 85.5
Nottinghamshire 7.1 33.952 92.7
Shropshire 7.0 13.738 71.3
Humberside 7.0 30.487 88.5
Durham 6.9 19.580 87.3
Gloucestershire 6.9 16.216 79.5
Lincolnshire 6.7 18.584 70.5
Lancashire 6.6 45.771 91.3
Leicestershire 6.0 26.115 88.8
Suffolk 6.0 16.691 70.6
Devon 6.0 27.428 79.3
Norfolk 5.8 19.258 69.3
Cheshire 5.4 24.483 88.6
North Yorkshire 5.1 16.245 72.1
Northumberland 4.6 6.263 79.7
Hereford and Worcester 4.5 13.654 72.6
Derbyshire 3.9 16.710 88.9
Warwickshire 3.5 7.661 81.1
Staffordshire 3.5 16.712 89.0

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby of 19 March, how he calculates the figures of(a) £28 and (b) £2.

Mr. Chope

The figures are calculated by applying the appropriate monetary weights given in paragraph 3.32 of the Revenue Support Grant Distribution Report (England) to the values of the specified indicators for Humberside, multiplying the result by the appropriate national scaling factor for highway maintenance and expressing the result as an amount per relevant adult (rounded to the nearest £1).

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his estimate of(a) the number of second homes, (b) the relationship of the standard charge to the poll tax and (c) the extra revenue accruing from this for each local authority in England; what are his proposals for taking this into account in faxing next year's expenditure targets; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Chope

Detailed information on the number of people registered as subject to the standard community charge, or on the multipliers being set by charging authorities is not yet available to the Department. Income from the standard charge is not taken into account in determining English local authorities' revenue-raising capacity for the purposes of grant distribution.

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment with reference to his Revenue Support Grant Distribution Report (England), annex A, V, highway maintenance, what was the basis on which the multipliers for road type weighting factors were arrived at.

Mr. Chope

Road lengths of different types are weighted in the following proportions:

Weighted
Principal roads in built-up areas 6
Principal roads in non-built-up areas 3
Other roads in built-up areas 2
Other roads in non-built-up areas 1

These weightings assume that the average cost of maintaining principal roads is three times that of maintaining non-principal roads and that the cost of maintaining built-up roads is double that of maintaining non-built-up roads. The 3:1 relative cost weighting between principal and non-principal roads is based on analysis of expenditure data for the two types of road from maintenance outturn forms returned to the Department of Transport. The 2:1 ratio between built-up and non-built-up roads is based on evidence from sparsely populated counties provided by the Association of County Councils in the early 1980s.

Mr. Ward

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will seek powers to require councils to reduce their community charge level next year by the amount contained in this year's charge for their contribution to the safety net.

Mr. Chope

No, although I hope that councils will do so voluntarily. Community charge bills in 1990–91 show safety net contributions as a separate item. In following years bills for authorities that formerly contributed to the safety net will show a straightforward comparison between the amount needed to provide a standard level of service and authorities' actual spending plans. It will be for authorities to justify to their chargepayers any excess of the latter over the former. For authorities receiving area protection grant, which replaces the safety net after 1990–91, this will appear as a separate item on community charge bills.