§ Mr. DrewTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will identify by local area the impact of the savings expected to be made to meet the requirements of the Supporting People overspend. [167891]
§ Yvette CooperThere has been no overspend of the Supporting People budget. The Supporting People budget was fixed at the total level of funding spent on housing related support as at the 31 March 2003 and has been capped. Given that the budget was much higher than predicted, the Government launched an Independent Review into the programme to look at value for money issues. The review found that £1.8 billion was too much to pay for the legacy programme with the result that the Government required authorities to make a small level of efficiency savings. The majority of these savings have been re-allocated back into the programme to pay for new supported schemes that came on stream in 2003–04.