§ Mr. Patrick ThompsonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to ensure housing management services are exempt from compulsory competitive tendering during local government reorganisation and that those authorities with only boundary changes following the review are exempted in the same way as those with structural changes. [25560]
§ Mr. Robert B. JonesOn 12 December, the Government made regulations—the Local Government Changes for England (Direct Labour and Service Organisations) Regulations 1994—to exempt local authorities undergoing reorganisation from most of the requirements of compulsory competitive tendering. However, the regulations as drafted did not extend to housing management services or to authorities which will undergo functional changes but where the transferor authority has not been abolished. I have now made amendment regulations to rectify these omissions. These are being laid before the House today.
I have also taken the opportunity in these same amendment regulations to extend the exemption to local authority subject to boundary changes but not structural changes as a result of the implementation of the recommendations of the Local Government Commission made in pursuance of a direction given before the date these regulations were made. I think it only fair that such authorities are treated in a similar way as those that have been restructured. They also will face problems arising from the need to take decisions on appropriate new patterns of service delivery.