Pulse.Assent

The government will fully fund the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding by councils and housing associations, estimated at £400 million, it was announced today (16 May 2018).

Local authorities and housing associations, which are non-profit making, will be given access to the money to help with reasonable costs of removing and replacing unsafe cladding from buildings which they own to ensure people are safe in their homes.

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the government quickly established a comprehensive building safety programme. It made clear that aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding on buildings over 18 metres which was not compliant with building regulations guidance should be remediated by the building owners.

The fund follows the government’s offer last year of financial flexibilities to assist local authorities with essential fire safety work. From conversations with social sector landlords, it has become apparent that they are having to take decisions about how to prioritise important services, repairs and maintenance work and investment in new homes.

The government has listened to their concerns, discussed the issue in Cabinet, and decided that, although social landlords have made good progress on replacing unsafe cladding, it is right to provide further support. It is therefore today announcing additional funding for the social sector. It recognises the tough decisions that are being made to carry out fire safety work as well as the potential impact on other services.

The government will also continue to provide financial flexibilities to councils for other essential fire safety measures and is directing local authorities to take cladding-related issues into account when carrying out reviews of housing conditions in their areas.

Social landlords have been working hard to replace unsafe cladding. Interim safety measures are in place in all affected buildings and latest figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show that over 65% (104 out of 158) of social housing buildings with unsafe cladding are currently going through the process of remediation.

The additional money will enable social housing providers to focus on providing safe properties for people to live in.

Housing Secretary Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP said:

People must always feel safe in their own home.

Since the tragic events at Grenfell Tower, we have taken steps to ensure the immediate safety of all high rise buildings.

This money will ensure local authorities and housing associations are being given the support they need to get this work done now as well as removing the uncertainty around funding.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond said:

We have always been clear that unsafe cladding must be removed from tower blocks so that people are safe in their own homes.

But we do not want vital safety work to put at risk our high priority house-building programmes. So we have decided to provide funding to ensure that housing associations and councils can carry out this vital work.

The government is clear that building owners in the private sector must ensure private sector homes are made safe.

The Secretary of State, Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP, will meet industry representatives to ensure that remediation work is completed as soon as possible.

The industry roundtable will take place shortly.

Further information

The government will set out further details shortly about how councils and housing associations can apply for funding, including conditions attached to the grant.

The Treasury is providing £4 million of additional funding to the ONS so that we continue to have world-leading statistics that capture what is happening in the modern economy.

This brings investment to-date to £16 million, and will allow the ONS to:

• develop new ways to measure the Sharing Economy and inflation, for example by trawling the internet for price changes
• fund improvements to the measurement of the labour market, trade, productivity and GDP in the face of rapid technological change via the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence
• roll out new PhDs and apprenticeship places for the next-generation of data scientists
• improve coverage of the services sector, on financial links across the economy and the breakdown of the UK’s trade around the world

The modern digital economy is harder to measure than the goods based economy of the past. The ONS is working hard to further understand the changes. The rapid rate of technological innovation, free services for consumers and major intangible investments by businesses all create challenges for the ONS, which this funding will help address.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Elizabeth Truss said:

We are boosting our understanding of the Britain’s dynamic, go-getting companies that are driving productivity
forward. From TransferWise to Deliveroo, disruptors are offering profoundly new services and shaking things up.

We want to understand their impact on the economy, as together we build a country that works for everyone.

National Statistician, John Pullinger said:

Today’s announcement will greatly help ONS meet the challenges of measuring new forms of economic activity and give policy makers better insights into the UK economy.

The Data Science Campus is already allowing us to interpret many new and exciting forms of data and the
Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence provides a crucial link to harnesses the internationally-renowned
expertise of our universities.

The new investment will also help ONS to build on recent innovations, such as the inclusion of the latest VAT information from thousands of UK business into official figures. New projects in the pipe line or already delivered
including better measurement of wages, trade in services, productivity and the digital economy.

What has the ONS already delivered?

The government commissioned Professor Sir Charles Bean to carry out an Independent Review of UK Economic Statistics. This review reported in March 2016 with recommendations for how the ONS should adapt to an increasingly digital world. The government responded at the time. This new funding will continue to deliver on the Bean Review’s recommendations. Since 2016 the ONS has:

• established an Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, bringing together academics and policymakers to deliver cutting edge research on how to measure the modern, digital economy
• established a Data Science Campus to harness the power of ‘Big Data’, particularly to improve real-time indicators of economic activity
• continued to develop ONS’s existing statistics, for instance through the inclusion of VAT data in GDP, which increases the number of small and medium-sized businesses sampled each month to over 600,000
• improved trade statistics, with substantially more country and commodity breakdowns in both goods and services
• significant productivity insights including company and regional level analysis
• improved the ONS’s analytical capability, including through expanding the number of economists in the ONS workforce to over 100

What the government is doing for the economy

We will improve our productivity by embracing new technologies, investing in skills and infrastructure, and helping businesses create better, higher-paying jobs. We are delivering an ambitious Industrial Strategy and:

• increasing the National Productivity Investment Fund to £31 billion as well as increasing R&D spending by the largest amount for 40 years
• establishing the UK as a world-leader in emerging technology such as A.I. and driverless cars while reforming technical education and re-training

The Connected Communities Innovation Fund, delivered in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and innovation foundation Nesta, will support people and places to thrive through the power of volunteering. The fund also builds on the work already underway between DCMS and Nesta to encourage people of all ages to volunteer and to ensure people see social action as a routine part of their lives.

16 grantees will receive a portion of the fund, with projects using the money to develop and test early stage ideas as well as scaling programmes which are currently having a positive impact.

Examples of projects that will receive funding are:

• EqualArts who will receive £244,000 to expand it’s HenPower project across the country. The programme uses hen-keeping to build relationships between care home residents and the wider community and helps to improve wellbeing, while reducing loneliness and depression.
• The Restart Project will be given £204,000 for its project that aims to prevent electronic waste by training people in their community to repair devices instead of throwing them away.
• Volunteer Action North East Lincolnshire (VANEL) will be handed £77,500 to scale the works its doing to harness the skills of retiring and retired blue lights service personnel to help the community prepare, respond and recover from emergencies.

Tracey Crouch, Minister for Sport and Civil Society said:

Volunteering has a hugely beneficial impact on people’s lives. It has the power to harness community spirit and strengthen local areas by improving people’s wellbeing and decreasing social isolation .

This investment will create more opportunities for people to share their skills while supporting people in need – it will also help provide a rewarding experience for the volunteers themselves. I am looking forward to seeing the impact it has on a range of areas over the next few years.

Quote from Carrie Deacon, Head of Social Action Innovation at Nesta :

We know that when citizens share their time, knowledge and skills alongside public services, communities can achieve great things together. By supporting these innovative social action projects to develop and grow we know they will transform lives, and make a significant impact on some of the biggest social challenges we face. We’re excited to be supporting these projects over the next two years’.

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS:

The Connected Communities Innovation Fund will support the best innovations that mobilise many more people throughout their lives, to support people and places to thrive, alongside public services.

The Connected Innovation Funds grantees are:

• British Red Cross will receive £75,000 to transform their ways of working by shifting their focus to community assets. They will train community groups to support each other during times of need, particularly responding to and recovering from emergencies in a confident and consistent manner, testing the initiative in three London boroughs.
• Cities of Service will receive £235,425 to scale its ‘The Next Generation project model which mobilises volunteers to meet city-wide challenges with four local authorities to involve more people to improve their lives and their neighbourhood.
• Church Action on Poverty will receive £170,250 to expand it’s Self-Reliant Groups model which arrange for a small groups of people – usually from disadvantaged backgrounds – to meet weekly, save money, share skills, and use their savings to set up micro-enterprises or support one another with loans.
• Equal Arts will receive £244,000 to expand it’s HenPower project by 60% across the country. The project uses hen-keeping to build relationships between care home residents and wider communities to improve wellbeing, reduce loneliness and depression.
• Grandparents Plus will receive £276,94 for its ‘Kinship Connect’ project that brings together kinship carers to help themselves by building face to face and online communities of support.
• Hull UK City of Culture 2017 Ltd will receive £250,000 for a project that will build on the success of Hull’s City of Culture year by mobilising more volunteers to enhance the wellbeing of Hull residents, encouraging social interaction, building confidence and generating confidence to take part, with a focus on tackling isolation.
• In2Science will receive £250,000 to support local 16-17 olds from disadvantaged backgrounds to go on to study STEM degrees at university by leveraging the expertise and passion of local scientists, engineers, and technology and maths professionals.
• Library of Things will receive £74,978 to reinvents libraries and improves lives by providing cheap access to useful things like power and gardening tools, cleaning equipment and by enabling volunteer-led skill-sharing events. They will use the grant to formalise their model, develop their volunteering offer and grow their team to scale sustainably.
• Neighbourhood and Home Watch Network will receive £74,987 to develop a volunteer-led support programme for older people who have experienced fraud, or are at greater risk of being a victim of fraud, by working in partnership with local police, victim support and charities.
• North Yorkshire County Council will receive £100,000 for it’s ‘Enhance North Yorkshire’ project which coordinates individual volunteers and established groups within the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise sector and local businesses to support collaborative emergency response and management, building on their successful volunteer-led Major Incident Response Team which has already responded to 170 emergencies in North Yorkshire.
• Oomph! Will receive £84,950 to improve the mental and physical outcomes of frail, lonely older people through volunteer-led walks that connect them to the community.
• The Restart Project will receive £204,000 to prevents electronic waste by changes the way people consume electronics. The project will host ‘Restart Parties’ where volunteers repair electronic devices and train people in the community to repair their own devices.
• The Southampton Collective will receive £75,000 to empower communities to take action on air pollution by training volunteer citizen-scientists to build and deploy low-cost air quality monitors around Southampton to generate data, raise awareness and ultimately change behaviour to tackle air pollution in the city.
• UpRising Leadership will receive £270,000 for it’s ‘1 Million Mentors’ programme which aims to ensure every young person in the country has access to a trained mentor as they transition into adulthood. They aim to train and match a million mentors to a million young people over the next ten years. They will use the funding to expand their work in 14 new areas in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and London.
• Volunteer Action North East Lincolnshire will receive £77,500 to scale this work up to harness the skills of even more retiring and retired blue lights service personnel to help the community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies.
• Volunteer Centre Camden will receive £86,925 for its Coordinating And Mobilising Emergency Response Activists project which will involve volunteers in emergency responses in the London Boroughs of Camden and Hammersmith and Fulham. The programme will develop a bank of known and trusted volunteers for local authorities, so they can be activated to support and collaborate with public service responses.

Each of the organisations’ progress will be documented and findings published on Nesta’s website.

The investment, announced today by the Department for Health and Social Care, Public Health England (PHE) and NHS England marks the start of a 3-year programme worth £25 million that will reach the whole country by 2021.

It forms part of the government’s commitment to reduce suicides in England by 10% by 2021 and will support the zero suicide ambition for mental health inpatients announced by Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt in January of this year.

Currently one person every 90 minutes dies by suicide in the UK and approximately two thirds of these are not in contact with mental health services.

The funding, which has been allocated to 8 sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) with a high level of need, will help to ensure people know high-quality confidential help is available within their community. It will include targeted prevention campaigns for men; psychological support for people with financial difficulties; better care after discharge; and improved self-harm services for all ages.

The funds are set to improve suicide prevention strategies, signposting and raising awareness through to improving quality for safer services and will help drive better surveillance and collection of data on suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm.

It builds upon major work from all local authorities to put multi-agency suicide plans in place, and work for a close join up between health services, public health teams and the voluntary sector.

Jackie Doyle-Price, Minister for Mental Health, said:

Every single suicide is a tragedy – which is why this funding is so vital. Working with the Samaritans and others in high risk areas, we will make sure people get the care they need as early as possible, because that is what saves lives. All local areas are developing suicide prevention plans and this work will support our ‘zero suicide’ ambition in mental health inpatient units.

Duncan Selbie, Chief Executive at Public Health England, said:

Suicide destroys lives and is devastating for the loved ones they leave behind. We need to do everything we can to offer more help to people in distress and this is a big step towards that.

Claire Murdoch, NHS England Director for Mental Health, said:

The NHS is committed to improving mental health services and increasing people’s access to help, when they need it the most. Working closely with families, councils, government and charities like the Samaritans, the additional funding and suicide prevention plans confirmed today will mean more people in crisis, in some of the most under-served parts of the country, will be able to get the crucial support they need.

Working closely with those who have been impacted by suicide and those with national expertise, including the Samaritans, the areas to receive funding this year have been identified due to their high level of need and will focus on particularly at-risk groups such as men and those who self-harm.

The areas set to receive funding are:

• Kent and Medway
• Lancashire and South Cumbria
• Norfolk and Waveney
• South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw
• Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire
• Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
• Coventry and Warwickshire
• Durham, Darlington, Teesside, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby

Ruth Sutherland, Samaritans Chief Executive Officer, said:

Suicide is an urgent and complex issue with 3 times more people dying by suicide than in road accidents. We welcome these measures as an important first step, targeting those who are most at risk of taking their own life. We will continue to work with the government to help ensure its funding supports multi-agency working to achieve strong prevention measures in all local areas in order to reduce deaths by suicide.

The £25 million investment over 3 years is in addition to significant investment in mental health as part of the NHS Five Year Forward View for mental health to deliver accessible high-quality care. This includes expansion in crisis care for all ages, children and young people’s services and services for pregnant women and new mothers which should also support a reduction in suicides.

Background

1. Public Health England exists to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities. We do this through world-leading science, knowledge and intelligence, advocacy, partnerships and providing specialist public health services. We are an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care, and a distinct organisation with operational autonomy. We provide government, local government, the NHS, Parliament, industry and the public with evidence-based professional, scientific expertise and support. Follow us on Twitter: @PHE_uk and Facebook: www.facebook.com/PublicHealthEngland.
2. Please remember if you are reporting on suicides to follow the Samaritans media guidelines to help prevent copycat suicides from occurring.
3. Suicides in the UK: 2016 registrations provides data on registered deaths in the UK from suicide analysed by sex, age, area of usual residence of the deceased and suicide method.
4. Reported road casualties in Great Britain: 2016 annual report.