DLUHC annual report and accounts 2021 to 2022: 2. Performance analysis

Question 1

Overview

Accepted Answer

This section sets out the department’s performance against its five priority outcomes and its strategic enablers as set out in the 2021-22 Outcome Delivery Plan. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and EU transition on delivery activity and outcomes is also specified where applicable.

Question 2

1.  Raise productivity and empower places so everyone can benefit from levelling up

Accepted Answer

The creation of the new Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities reflects the Government’s commitment to levelling up and will be instrumental in driving forward the agenda across government, ensuring we are geared up to deliver on our ambitions.

Over the last year the department has set out the government’s vision for the agenda and its policy and reform priorities that will:

Boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards by growing the private sector, especially in those places where they are lagging;
Spread opportunities and improve public services, especially in those places where they are weakest;
Restore a sense of community, local pride and belonging, especially in those places where they have been lost; and
Empower local leaders and communities, especially in those places lacking local agency.

The specific investments detailed below build on existing action we are already taking across government, and are a down payment in a wider programme of systemic change in the way we address regional disparities. Going forward, DLUHC will be responsible for driving both the system changes and policy required to deliver levelling up across government, including supporting departments in delivering against our new missions and tracking overall progress. The department is also on track for introducing an ambitious legislative programme, including the landmark Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which bring system change.

We continued our commitment to push government to work in a more strategic and cross-cutting way in places. The Levelling Up White Paper sets out a clear plan to level up every corner of the UK, which is underpinned by 12 ambitious “missions” to anchor the agenda to 2030. Missions are a tool to breakdown silos and encourage cooperation across the public, private and voluntary sectors. To ensure missions deliver these benefits we have implemented a new architecture across central government to support delivery. This ‘mission architecture’ provides clear accountability through named individuals taking responsibility for progress and puts in place structures designed to smooth interdepartmental cooperation on a mission-by-mission basis.

A new Levelling Up Cabinet Sub-Committee has been established, tasked with embedding levelling up across central government policy design and delivery. The committee will also work directly with local leaders to improve the clarity, consistency and coordination of policy.

Place is also at the heart of the mission architecture, with Levelling Up Directors, being recruited in 2022-23, assuming a central role and the Levelling Up Cabinet Sub-Committee regularly considering place-based assessments of mission progress.

We have committed to publish an annual report that will update the public on progress against the missions so that levelling up is subject to rigorous external scrutiny, including by Parliament.

In February 2022, the NAO published a report on “Supporting local economic growth”, a summary of which can be found in the Governance Statement.

Our achievements against the published Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for 2021-22 are outlined below, covering how we delivered against the programmes and projects outlined in the ODP, and our contributions to Sustainable Development Goals.

What we achieved in 2021-22

Reform

Published the transformative Levelling Up White Paper in February 2022, which matches the government’s ambition for levelling up, builds on the existing action we are already taking across Government and sets out a new policy regime that will drive change for years to come, including 12 clear and ambitious medium-term missions to drive our levelling up objectives across and beyond government.
Mobilised internally to embed a whole new programme of work to better deliver on levelling up across DHLUC and wider government. This includes a new appointed Director General now in post to drive delivery of our levelling up missions and a new Spatial Data Unit Director to lead geo spatial data and analysis.
Committed to appointing Levelling Up Directors in 2022-23, as a single point of contact for local leaders and a first port of call for new and innovative local policy proposals, working closely with HMG officials responsible for delivering the levelling up strategy.

Levelling Up Investments

Allocated around £1.9 billion throughout the UK through the Levelling Up Fund, Community Renewal Fund and Community Ownership Fund, including £191 million in Scotland, £169 million in Wales and £61 million in Northern Ireland since October 2021.
Launched and completed successful first round Levelling Up Fund totalling £1.7 billion to 105 projects in October 2021, investing in local projects across the UK to support the regeneration of town centres and high streets, improve local transport and cultural and heritage assets up and down the UK from Rother Valley to Rhondda Cynon Taf. The prospectus for the next bidding round was published in March 2022 and will focus on the same investment themes of culture, regeneration and transport. The second round will form the next part of the total £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund.
Backed 477 locally-led, innovative projects through the £200 million UK Community Renewal Fund to pilot imaginative new programmes ranging from £1 million to train people in construction skills in Devon to £400,000 ‘seaweed academy’ in Argyll and Bute providing education in seaweed farming, which will boost productivity and grow local economies. Community Renewal Fund is helping local areas prepare for the launch of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund in Spring 2022.
Allocated the first round of the £150 million Community Ownership Fund which will help communities protect and manage treasured assets such as community centres, sports stadiums and pubs. As at March 2022, the Community Ownership Fund has funded 31 bids totalling £7.92 million across all areas of the United Kingdom, with the next round due to be announced in May 2022. An example of the 31 projects is the Leigh Spinners Mill Community Regeneration, located in Wigan and awarded £250,000. The Mill is a Grade II listed building that has been vacant for many years and faced a risk of loss due to its physical deterioration. The funding will be used to complete the sustainable restoration of the mill complex and ensure more floorspace is available for heritage, community, and commercial purposes. The multiple-use asset will deliver a range of community services, such as supporting community groups, creating jobs in local enterprises, and delivering training and education opportunities.
Published the Pre-Launch Guidance for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), providing £2.6 billion of new funding for local investment by March 2025. UKSPF launched on 13 April 2022, and is a central pillar of the UK Government’s ambitious levelling up agenda and a significant component of its support for places across the UK.
Made tax incentives available in Humber, Teesside, Thames, Freeport East, Liverpool City Region, Solent and East Midlands Freeports. In November 2021 and December 2021, Teesside and Thames Freeports respectively become fully operational benefitting from both tax incentives and custom facilitations – a big step forward for businesses based in these Freeports who will now benefit from a comprehensive package of measures, comprising tax reliefs, customs, business rates retention, planning, regeneration, innovation and trade and investment support.
Initiated the competitive process for Freeports in the Devolved Administrations; the bidding prospectus for Scotland was published on 24 March 2022 with competition closing in June 2022. This should be followed by Wales in May 2022 with Northern Ireland later in the year.
Offered Town Deals to all 101 places, committing over £2.35 billion for town centre improvements, station redevelopments, new business hubs and much more in towns like Blackpool, Doncaster, Lowestoft and Middlesbrough.

Pan-Regional Partnerships

The Northern Powerhouse team worked with regional partners to deliver policy on key regional strengths. In March 2021, NP11 partnered with BEIS to deliver Your Journey to Net Zero North, an event which promoted action on Net Zero. In September 2021, alongside Northern Health Science Alliance, NP11 published the Life Sciences Supercluster report, which provided a strong evidence base for bringing together life sciences clusters across the North into a supercluster. In February 2022, the Convention of the North brought together stakeholders including five of the northern metro mayors, LEP chairs, third sector leaders, and politicians to discuss plans for the North and its post-pandemic recovery.
The Midlands Engine Partnership published the first pan regional level ten-point plan for Green Growth in July 2021, setting out how the Midlands will meet the challenge of net zero. This was followed up with the Midlands Engine Hydrogen Technologies Strategy in December 2021. The Midlands Engine Intelligence Hub was also launched in July 2021, the second State of the Region report was published in November 2021, and continued to work with Department for Culture, Media and Sport to deliver ‘Project Gigabit’ which aims to achieve 85% coverage of gigabit networks by 2025.
The Western Gateway Partnership is already working to implement its economic strategy for the region.

Devolution Deals

Established the office of the of Mayor of West Yorkshire, following the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021 to implement the West Yorkshire deal, conferring significant powers on the Mayor and Combined Authority including transport; education, skills and training; housing and regeneration. Also conferred, from 10 May 2021, the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) on the Combined Authority, to be exercised by the Mayor.
Government also subsequently conferred borrowing powers for all their functions – for West Yorkshire as well as North of Tyne and South Yorkshire.

Resilience and Recovery

Invested £7.7 million in a pilot to provide direct funding to Local Resilience Forums (LRFs), building on the Integrated Review’s commitment to “consider strengthening the role and responsibilities of LRFs in England”. This was in addition to £850,000 new funding committed to local authorities to support recovery from floods, and £1.89 million to support reception arrangements for vulnerable Ukrainians arriving at ports of entry in England.
Sustained a dedicated 24/7 operational service to coordinate liaison between central government and the local tier on the pandemic and concurrent emergencies, including fuel shortages and the unprecedented series of named storms. This included ensuring military support was given to communities hardest hit by Storm Arwen.
Coordinated a review of Local Resilience Forums’ preparedness across a range of risks, including for winter 2021-22, covering ability to respond to COVID-19 variants, winter weather and other known risks, and to support the building of capability.
Designed and implemented an evaluation process for Local Resilience Forum funding pilots, including evaluating the effect that it has on local resilience, as part of a wider programme of work to develop a robust outcomes and evaluation framework for the Directorate as a whole.
Undertook a programme of engagement with resilience stakeholders to understand common issues, shape cross-government policy, and support development of a national resilience strategy.
Reviewed and renewed planning for DLUHC’s lead department responsibilities, including for flood recovery and a return of British Nationals to the UK.
Undertook a programme of engagement with resilience stakeholders to understand common issues, shape cross-government policy, and support development of a national resilience strategy.

Specific Challenges

The Levelling Up White Paper set out an ambitious, long-term agenda. The department is strengthening its capabilities, including by recruiting Levelling Up Directors. The department is monitoring closely the impact of supply chain and other constraints on funds and offers support where possible to Local Authorities who need further capacity to deliver successfully.

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund supports the SDGs below. It will invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life across the UK, including regenerating town centres and high streets, upgrading local transport, and investing in cultural and heritage assets.

SDG 8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

SDG 10 – Reduce inequality within and among countries

SDG 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

The Government aims to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all through the allocation of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), worth over £2.6 billion over the next three year SR period. In particular, the funding will help people get better skills and to get on in life, support the most vulnerable into work and create vibrant communities. It will create opportunity for places, regions and nations where outcomes currently lag. (SDG8 & SDG10).

To prepare communities to take full of advantage of the UKSPF when it launches in 2022, the Community Renewal Fund, noted above, is helping support local areas to pilot imaginative new approaches and programmes that unleash their potential and instil pride. This fund will support those on low incomes to become budding entrepreneurs, investing in local businesses and councils at the forefront of our decarbonisation drive, and funding new education and training facilities that will help people go far but stay local. (SDG8 & SDG10).

The White Paper has set out plans to support strong leadership, including extending the benefits of devolution to ultimately meet the commitment to full devolution in England. This, and our wider system reform, will be fundamental to levelling up, rebalancing the relationship between Whitehall and places. We have already made huge strides towards rebalancing the economy and empowering local government. This has been supported by the government’s programme of devolution, which includes nine mayoral devolution deals and one non-mayoral devolution deal in Cornwall. Mayoral devolution has strengthened local leadership and institutions, devolving key powers over transport, planning, skills and funding away from Whitehall so that they are exercised at the right level to make a difference for local communities. (SDG8 & SDG10).

We are already investing over £1.5 billion in City and Region Growth Deals in every part of Scotland, £790 million in deals across Wales, and £617 million in deals covering the whole of Northern Ireland. To support economic, social and cultural regeneration of places across the UK, the Government is focusing spending towards left-behind places through the £2.4 billion of Towns Fund investment, the £830 million Future High Streets Fund, and creation of Freeports to help regenerate areas of industrial decline. (SD11).

Question 3

2A.  Housing & Planning

Accepted Answer

In line with the government’s Levelling Up agenda, we are increasing our focus on addressing social injustices and levelling up. We will be much more place-based in our thinking and delivery; and work more expansively as a single Department and Government.

In the Levelling Up White Paper, we set a new mission to halve the number of non-decent rented homes by 2030, with the biggest improvements in the lowest performing areas. We will achieve this by introducing tough new standards for landlords, including in the private rented sector, as well as through transformational regeneration programmes in 20 towns and cities.

We will also support the White Paper mission to improve pride in place, by delivering a modernised planning system that puts local people in charge of shaping their communities, and delivers development that is beautiful by default, green and accompanied by new infrastructure – supported by local communities and through the regeneration of places.

The Department’s largest Arms-Length Body, Homes England, has a crucial role in helping to make this vision a reality. We are working with them through a policy delivery partnership to make sure they can best support the ambitions of the White Paper and align to the government’s priorities on levelling up, housing and regeneration. Understanding the sum of activity underway and working with them to make that a success is a key priority in the first part of 2022-23.

We are supporting economic recovery and helping the housing industry to build back better following the pandemic. Annual net additions in 2020-21 totalled 216,490 homes and we remain on track to deliver 1 million homes across 2019 to 2024. To support our high ambitions on housing and placemaking, we announced, at SR21 an additional £1.8 billion for housing supply, to deliver £10 billion investment since the start of this Parliament. Our housing supply programmes will unlock over 1 million new homes over the SR21 period and beyond.

In December 2021, the NAO published a report on Regulation of private renting, a summary of which can be found in the Governance Statement.

Our achievements against the published Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for 2021-22 are outlined below, covering how we delivered against the programmes and projects outlined in the ODP, and our contributions to Sustainable Development Goals.

What we achieved in 2021-22

Getting Britain building

Announced an additional £1.8 billion investment at Spending Review 2021, consisting of £300 million locally led grant funding for allocation to mayoral combined authorities and local authorities to help deliver their housing priorities, and £1.5 billion to regenerate underused land and deliver transport links and community facilities.
Continued to support borrowers through the Home Building (Short-Term) Fund, which had an initial allocation of £2.5 billion in 2016. The Fund is targeted at small and medium-sized housebuilders, modern methods of construction and other innovative forms of housing delivery. To date, a total of £2.09 billion has been contracted or approved of which 93% has been to small and medium-sized housebuilders.
Allocated a second tranche of the Brownfield Fund to the 7 mayoral combined authorities, helping to transform blighted brownfield sites and on track to unlock 26,000 high quality homes in our towns and cities.
Allocated a further £30m of funding, delivered through the Brownfield Housing Fund, to 3 mayoral combined authorities that will regenerate brownfield sites and unlock a further 2,500 homes.
Allocated £57.8 million to councils from the Brownfield Land Release Fund, of which £25 million was made available to self and custom build projects, to release land for 5,600 homes for housing by 2024, while helping protect countryside and green spaces.

Figure 1 - Our performance: Net additional dwellings per annum

Annual housing supply in England amounted to 216,490 net additional dwellings in 2020-21, down 11% on 2019-20 due to the impact of Covid-19. We have supported the industry throughout the pandemic by enabling construction sites to remain open and operate safely in line with public guidance, so that house builders were able to deliver above the 186,500 forecasted for the UK as a whole by the OBR in November 2020.

The annual housing supply resulted from 194,060 new build homes, 23,790 gains from change of use between non-domestic and residential, 3,870 from conversions between houses and flats and 530 other gains (caravans, house boats etc.), offset by 5,760 demolitions.

Year	Net additional dwellings
2020-21	216,490
2019-20	242,700
2018-19	241,880
2017-18	222,280
2016-17	217,350

Source: Housing Supply: Net Additional Dwellings; release schedule: annually in November

Figure 2 - Our performance: Gross supply of affordable housing completions.

There were 52,100 affordable homes delivered in England in 2020-21, a decrease of 12% compared to 2019-20. Since 2013-14, affordable rent has become the most common tenure type for affordable homes delivery. In 2020-21, there were 23,715 new affordable rent homes, representing 46% of all new affordable homes.

Year	Gross supply of affordable housing completions
2020-21	52,100
2019-20	58,900
2018-19	57,175
2017-18	47,069
2016-17	42,195
2015-16	32,614

Source: Affordable housing supply data; release schedule: annually in November/December

Helping people onto the housing ladder

As part of the largest single investment in affordable housing in a decade, 86 new Strategic Partnerships were allocated £8.6 billion under the Affordable Homes Programme to deliver 119,000 new homes. This includes 56,750 for affordable home ownership, helping many more people realise the dream of owning their own homes.
Introduced a 95% mortgage guarantee scheme at Spring 2021 budget to enable homebuyers to secure a mortgage up to £600,000 anywhere in the UK with a 5% deposit, subject to the usual affordability checks. Six lenders are participating within the scheme with over 45 other lenders now offering 95% mortgages generating over 300 95% mortgage products on the market.
Launched the Help to Build Equity Loan prospectus in November 2021, with the scheme expected to open to applications soon for people in England who want to custom-build or self-build their own home.
Launched the Levelling Up Home Building Fund in February 2022 to support small and medium enterprises and diversify the homebuilding market. The fund is designed to be flexible and can be deployed proactively and innovatively, for example to support local areas achieve their regeneration ambitions, or by supporting platform lending vehicles targeting particular areas of the country.
Introduced the First Homes policy in England through a Written Ministerial Statement and worked with Homes England to deliver this type of affordable housing for first-time buyers through three routes: converting market units to First Homes on Homes England land; working with some councils to deliver early units through the planning system; and a 1,500 home grant-funded pilot programme running to the end of 2022-23.
Helped more than 26,000 households purchase a new build home between January and June 2021 through the Help to Buy Equity Loan (2013 – 2021) Scheme.
Launched the Help to Buy: Equity Loan (2021-2023) scheme on 1 April 2021 with regional price limits, set at 1.5 times the average first-time buyer price in each region in England, helping those who need it most; first-time buyers interested in new-build homes.

Leasehold

Introduced the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, putting an end to ground rents for new, qualifying long residential leasehold properties in England and Wales. This is a first part of major leasehold reform legislation bringing about one of the most significant changes to property law in a generation.
Arranged for Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate mis-selling of leasehold properties and unfair terms for existing leaseholders, including high and increasing ground rents. Secured commitments from some main property developers to amend their practices regarding doubling ground rents and houses sold as leasehold, for the benefit of leaseholders.
Established the Commonhold Council – an advisory panel of leasehold groups and industry experts to advise the government on the implementation of a reformed commonhold regime and bring forward solutions to prepare homeowners and the market for the widespread take up of commonhold for new supply of flats.

Reform the planning system

Commenced Digital pathfinders and collaborative projects with Local Plan Pathfinders in 10 local authorities to look at the digital transformation of local plans.
Allocated over £1 million to 13 planning authorities under the PropTech Engagement Fund in October 2021, to test innovative digital initiatives to make the planning process more open and accessible and boost public engagement. This was followed by a second round of the Fund totalling £3.25 million in March 2022, for a further 28 projects.
Introduced a further new permitted development right allowing the change of use from vacant buildings (3 month vacancy requirement) in the new Class E to residential use from 1 August 2021. This means that a wider range of commercial buildings typically found in high streets and town centres can change to residential use without the need for a full planning application.

Better quality, accessible, homes

Set out government’s ambition to halve the number of non-decent rented homes by 2030 and continued to implement the measures in The Charter for Social Housing Residents: Social Housing White Paper to drive up social housing quality.
Concluded the first phase of a review of the Decent Homes Standard, which sets out the minimum standards for social housing decency. Began the second phase, including both rented sectors as a result of our Levelling Up White Paper commitments, in March.
The Regulator of Social Housing delivered a consultation on the new Tenant Satisfaction Metrics, recruited new Board members and a new Chair, and set out initial thinking on how they will deliver proactive consumer regulation.
The Housing Ombudsman Service continued publishing all individual case determinations and landlord performance reports; 750 landlord performance reports were published in 2020-21. Compliance levels with its orders and recommendations (within 3 months) is at 99%.

Domestic Abuse

New legal duties set out in the Domestic Abuse Act came into force on 1st October 2021, ensuring victims and their children across England can access the right support in safe accommodation when they need it.
Announced in February 2022, a further £125 million for councils across England to make sure safe accommodation spaces, such as refuges and shelters, can provide victims with vital support services including healthcare, social workers and benefits.
Set up a Ministerial led Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation National Expert Steering Group to provide oversight and ensure robust delivery of the new duties.

Disabled Facilities Grant

Disbursed £573 million Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) funding for 2021-22 to local authorities in England in May 2021.
In the recently published Adult Social Care White Paper, People at the Heart of Care, Government announced £573 million for the Disabled Facilities Grant in each year from 2022-23 to 2024-25.

Supported Housing

Completed the local authority pilots with Birmingham, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Bristol and Hull in September 2021. The independent evaluation and best practice from the pilots will be published later this year. The government is committed to addressing quality issues in supported housing, as a priority. The total funding for the five local authority pilots was £5.4 million.
Announced £20 million in March 2022, for a three year Supported Housing Improvement Programme, which will build on the successful pilots and support the worst affected areas to improve the quality and value for money of supported housing. Also announced alongside this, the government’s intention to bring forward measures to put an end to unscrupulous landlords exploiting some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Specific Challenges

COVID-19 created a difficult delivery environment, with issues around inflation, materials and labour, and as a result, annual housing supply was down 11 per cent on 2019-20. The department’s delivery was affected by the same issues, and by the need to reset objectives following the creation of the new department, and the need to prioritise the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Whilst delays due to COVID-19 are less likely in the year ahead, macro-economic factors and supply chain issues will continue to present significant challenges.

In response, we continue to work closely with partners to manage capacity and capability risks through our delivery chain. In addition, the Spending Review provided additional flexibility for our housing delivery agency, Homes England, to take step to address optimism bias in their planning assumptions and operate a degree of over-programming in future years to use its budgets efficiently. Closer monitoring is also being carried out in response to the uncovering of a significant funding surplus for the GLA’s Affordable Homes Programme (further details in governance section).

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

More, better quality, safer, greener and more affordable homes outcome contributes to the following SDGs:

SDG 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

SDG 13 – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

Housing has a significant role to play in support of the Government’s net zero targets. This applies across both the construction phase and on a whole life basis, and requires the introduction of innovative design and construction techniques into the sector.

The Government supports the uptake of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), which contributes to the goal of sustainable industrialisation (SDG9). MMC is associated with less pollution and noise onsite and improved energy performance through airtightness – we are seeking to validate MMC’s capacity to reduce embodied carbon over the whole asset lifetime (including end of life).

Many DLUHC and Homes England programmes either facilitate or mandate the use of certain amounts of MMC – this includes through the £8 billion Affordable Homes Programme (2021-2026), where 25% of the affordable housing delivered by Strategic Partners will be required to be constructed through MMC. Concurrently we are exploring options to break down barriers to investment in MMC, such as standardisation of design and build warranties.

The Government’s Home Building Fund includes £3 billion of short-term funding for SME housebuilders, custom builders and developers using MMC, and is only available to those who cannot access finance elsewhere.

Build guarantee schemes, such as the £3 billion Affordable Housing Guarantee Scheme (AHGS 2020) announced last year, and its 2013 predecessor, continue to provide wider support and diversification for sections of the housing market.

We are currently exploring how Planning Reform will contribute to the provision of adequate, safe and affordable housing which meets environmental standards, sustainable transport, and strengthening national and regional development planning.

In July 2021, we published a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to include amendments on ‘Achieving Sustainable Development’ that explicitly refers to the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development, especially SDG11.

This includes the National Model Design Code used by local councils as a guide to develop their own design codes, setting design standards that new development is expected to meet in their local area, and sets out a process for engaging local communities to create homes, buildings and public places which are safe, inclusive and accessible (SDG 11.3.2). For example, the guidance sets design parameters around mitigating and adapting to climate change, including the use of green infrastructure, sustainable drainage systems and encouraging active transport through design (SDG 11.2).

The £8.6 billion Affordable Homes Programme 2021-26 allocated through Strategic Partnerships, will deliver 119,000 affordable homes. As part of the assessment criteria for Strategic Partnerships, social housing providers were asked to sign up to delivering homes in line with the National Design Guide which illustrates how well-designed places that are beautiful, enduring and successful can be achieved in practice. This builds upon the success of our £9 billion Shared Ownership and Affordable Homes Programme 2016-23, running to 2023, which will deliver approximately 250,000 new affordable homes.

The Social Housing White Paper, published in November 2020, will contribute to SDG11.1.1, “ensuring access to all for adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and avoid slums”. The White Paper sets out wide-ranging reforms which will improve the lives of social housing residents across the country. The measures, including strengthening the Regulator of Social Housing and Housing Ombudsman, will ensure social housing landlords consistently meet housing decency standards and deliver good-quality services for their residents.

Question 4

2B.  Safer and Greener Buildings

Accepted Answer

In January 2022 the Secretary of State announced three key principles through which the Government will approach building safety: Proportionality: restoring proportionality in the system; Protecting leaseholders: leaseholders are protected from bearing the bulk of the cost for remediation and mitigation of fire risks – instead those industries at fault must pay; Holding industry to account: there should be commercial and reputational consequences for those who have, and continue to, knowingly put lives at risk.

Following intensive talks with the largest housing developers and the Home Builders Federation we now have a solution that will see industry contribute an estimated £5 billion to address the building safety defects in residential buildings. This includes developers committing an estimated £2 billion to remediate (or refund the remediation of) buildings they have developed over the past 30 years, and £3 billion raised through an expansion of the Building Safety Levy to fund a new cladding remediation scheme to cover all other unsafe 11-18m residential buildings containing private leasehold properties that fall outside the cover provided by these pledges. Over 45 of the UK’s biggest homebuilders have already pledged to undertake all necessary life-critical fire-safety work on 11m+ buildings in which they have had a role in developing over the past thirty years, alongside an agreement to refund money paid out by existing government remediation schemes to fix buildings that they originally developed.

We are establishing a new cladding remediation scheme to cover all other unsafe 11-18m residential buildings containing private leasehold properties that fall outside the cover provided by these pledges. Our intention is that the scheme is funded through the Building Safety Levy, which has been expanded to allow it to be charged on all new residential buildings.

We also continue to deliver the £5.1 billion in existing remediation programmes for high-rise residential buildings to replace unsafe ACM and non-ACM cladding for buildings 18m and above.

We are ensuring all parts of the system understand and take a proportionate approach to risk. In January 2022, following the Secretary of State’s announcement about new approaches to building safety, PAS 9980 was introduced and the Consolidated Advice Note (CAN) was withdrawn. The PAS 9980 guidance provides a more proportionate and consistent approach for assessing risks in external walls compared with the binary interpretation of the CAN which saw an overly cautious approach adopted to the assessments of external wall risks and the use of External Wall System fire review certificates (EWS1s) for mortgage valuations.

The department is preparing to launch a professional indemnity scheme, targeted at qualified professionals, to enable them to undertake EWS1 assessments. The department has taken the unprecedented decision to intervene where there is a clear market failure in the availability of professional indemnity insurance.

The Secretary of State announced in January that the Scheme would launch by Easter. We are working to finalise commercial arrangements to issue policies and handle claims for the Scheme. Due to significant delivery issues, the scheme is delayed though we remain committed to launching the Scheme as soon as possible.

In addition, the Department has provided £700,000 of funding to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to train more assessors and build market capacity. There are now over 1,000 candidates on the course.

The Government is committed to protecting leaseholders, who bought their flats in good faith and are innocent parties. Our landmark Building Safety Act protects qualifying leaseholders in law from all costs associated with fixing unsafe cladding, and will have far-reaching and robust legal protections from non-cladding costs including a fixed cap on contributions.

In July 2021, the NAO published a report on Local government and net zero in England, a summary of which can be found in the Governance Statement.

Our achievements against the published Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for 2021-22 are outlined below, covering how we delivered against the programmes and projects outlined in the ODP, and our contributions to Sustainable Development Goals.

What we achieved in 2021-22

Building Safety Reform

The Building Safety Bill concluded its passage through Lords Committee on 2 March, and achieved Royal Assent on Thursday 28 April 2022 becoming the Building Safety Act.
Provided the funding required to the Office for Product Safety and Standards to set up the National Regulator for Construction Products including up to £10 million this year to start delivering, pending it becoming fully operational once the Building Safety Bill and subsequent secondary legislation have been approved by Parliament.
Appointed experts to lead an independent review of the system for testing construction products, as part of the government’s ongoing programme of work to reform and strengthen building safety regulation.
Published an Independent Expert Statement in July 2021 on issues of proportionality in relation to building safety in medium and lower rise blocks of flats, the impact on the housing market, and what more government could do to ensure approaches that are proportionate to the level of risk.

Remediation Delivery

Made further progress with the remediation of unsafe Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding with 452 (94%) of all identified high-rise residential and publicly owned buildings in England having either completed or started remediation work at the end of March 2022. Of these 422 buildings (87%) no longer have unsafe ACM cladding systems. This includes 372 buildings (77%) that have completed ACM remediation works, of which 316 buildings (65%) have received building control sign off. Of the 31 buildings (6%) yet to start, 5 are vacant (1%), so do not represent a risk to resident safety, and 15 additional buildings were identified after 31 December 2020.
Allocated a total of over £1.2 billion of the Building Safety Fund as at March 2022 for the remediation of non-ACM cladding for buildings, of which £1,096 million is for private sector remediation and £132 million is for social sector remediation.
Increased the Waking Watch Relief Fund from £30 million to £35 million to pay for the costs of installing an alarm system in buildings with unsafe cladding, and enable costly Waking Watch measures to be replaced in buildings waiting to have unsafe cladding removed.
Launched a further £27 million of Waking Watch Replacement Fund to replace costly Waking Watch measures in all buildings where a Waking Watch is in place at cost to leaseholders.

Grenfell Tower

Continued to keep the Grenfell Tower site safe and secure until a decision is made about its future. This includes ensuring regular checks and maintenance to ensure the ongoing structural integrity of the Tower. Essential maintenance activities and inspection have continued throughout the pandemic and the next phase of safety works have commenced. A contract to carry out the safety works and day to day maintenance at the site was awarded in May 2021 and they began work on site in July 2021.

Support the Grenfell Community

Grenfell Memorial Commission resumed their meetings and conversations with the community in January 2022 following a meeting with the Secretary of State and are continuing their work towards creating a fitting memorial.
Continued to report quarterly on progress against the recommendations from the government response to Phase One of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report. The most recent progress update was published in September 2021.

Grenfell Inquiry

The Department continued to fulfil its obligations as a Core Participant to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, delivering the evidence required by the Inquiry on time and harnessing Departmental expertise to support the Inquiry to get to the truth.
Continued to report quarterly on progress against the recommendations from the government response to Phase One of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report. The most recent progress update was published in September 2021.

Net Zero

Published our response to the Future Buildings Standard (FBS) consultation in December 2021. Also implemented an interim uplift to Part L (conservation of fuel and power) of the Building Regulations, which will act as a stepping-stone to the Future Homes and Building Standards. Once the uplift comes into force, in June 2022, new homes will be expected to deliver 30% fewer carbon emissions compared to the previous standards and new non-domestic buildings will be expected to deliver 27% fewer carbon emissions. Following the introduction of the interim uplift, we remain on track to develop the full technical specification for the Future Homes and Future Buildings Standards, which we will consult upon in 2023.
Published a progress report on the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) Action Plan jointly with BEIS, with 11 of the 35 actions completed and work well-advanced on several others. Some actions will require legislation to amend the relevant regulations and we will consult on these elements in 2022.
Continued to deliver efficiencies through in-house management of the cloud-based Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) Register, which has allowed us to reduce statutory lodgement fees for the second consecutive year. The EPB Register, which passed the Government Digital Service Live Assessment in December 2021, now carries approximately 27 million certificates and recommendation reports including more than 2.8 million lodgements received since September 2020.

Specific Challenges

The Building Safety programme is complex, requiring co-ordination between many different actors. The reset of the Building Safety approach announced in January 2022, detailed above, addresses the challenges the programme has faced. Implementing this new approach is a focus for the year ahead.

Our remediation programmes are focused on ensuring all medium and high rise buildings with historic cladding defects are remediated to a proportionate and consistent standard as quickly as possible. Working across multiple delivery partners and actors to drive pace and tackle delivery risks, we are implementing a strong accountability and enforcement framework, taking action against recalcitrant actors and working to increase supply chain and workforce capacity. In addition to the government led schemes, we are working with housebuilders and social housing providers to ensure they meet their commitments to remediate all affected buildings they are responsible for.

The Professional Indemnity Insurance scheme was delayed last year due to issues with our commercial arrangements. We anticipate launching the scheme in September.

We are continuing to work with the Grenfell community on the sensitive and important issues of the future of Grenfell Tower and a memorial on the site.

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

More, better quality, safer, greener and more affordable homes outcome contributes to the following SDGs:

SDG 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

SDG 13 – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

The uplift to the Building Regulations noted above, will provide a meaningful reduction of approximately 30% in carbon emissions from new homes. It will also act as a stepping stone to the Future Homes Standard, to be introduced from 2025, which will result in at least 75% fewer carbon emissions from new homes.

Also noted above, we are committed to delivering the Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) Action Plan to increase the accuracy, reliability, and trust in EPCs and make them more valuable and effective in driving energy and carbon saving. As part of delivering the Action Plan we intend to consult on changes to the Energy Performance of Buildings Regulations in 2022 to reform the regulations and ensure they are fit for the future.

The Building Safety Remediation programme’s immediate focus, as noted above, is ensuring residents are safe and feel safe in their homes, in line with SDG11.

Question 5

3.  End rough sleeping through more effective prevention and crisis intervention services, and reduce homelessness by enabling local authorities to fully meet their statutory duties

Accepted Answer

During the year, we built on the significant progress made in keeping rough sleepers safe and supported during the pandemic, continuing to drive reductions in rough sleeping and supporting local authorities to prevent homelessness, while funding new homes with wrap around support through the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme. We invested £800 million this year alone to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, with £2 billion committed over the next 3 years.

The Annual Rough Sleeping Snapshot for 2021 showed a 9% reduction from the previous year with the number of people sleeping rough on a single night at 2,440, the lowest level for 8 years. Rough sleeping decreased in every region of England compared to the previous year, falling for the fourth year in a row since 2017.

However, there are growing risks from Ukraine migration in addition to pressures on homelessness services expected in the coming months as a result of Afghanistan resettlement and cost of living pressures.

Our achievements against the published Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for 2021-22 are outlined below, covering how we delivered against the programmes and projects outlined in the ODP, and our contributions to UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Figure 3 - Our performance: Rough sleeping count for England

There were 2,440 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2021. This is down by 248 people or 9% from the previous year and down 49% from the peak in 2017. This is a single night snapshot and is taken annually in England using street counts, evidence-based estimates, and estimates informed by spotlight street counts.

Year	Number of rough sleepers	% change from previous year
2021	2,440	-9
2020	2,688	-37
2019	4,266	-9
2018	4,677	-2
2017	4,751	15
2016	4,134

Source: Rough Sleeping Statistics, Autumn 2021, England release schedule: annually in February

What we achieved in 2021-22

Preventing Homelessness

Committed £375 million through the Homelessness Prevention Grant to support local authorities to carry out their statutory homelessness duties, underlining the government’s commitment to ensure people at risk of becoming homeless, across the country, get help more quickly. This includes a £65 million one-off in-year increase to the Homelessness Prevention Grant to help vulnerable households with rent arrears to reduce the risk of them being evicted and becoming homeless as a result of rent arrears built up during the pandemic.
In July 2021, commenced the provision of the landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021 that means people who are homeless as a result of domestic abuse have priority need.
Announced an additional £316 million to be made available to local authorities in 2022-23 through the Homelessness Prevention Grant. This includes an additional £5.8 million to cover the cost of new burdens associated with the expansion of priority need to those forced into homelessness by domestic abuse, following the landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
In December 2021, the number of households with children in temporary accommodation decreased 1.4% from December 2020 to 58,620.

Rough Sleeping Initiative

Provided councils across England with £203 million under the Rough Sleeping Initiative. This is more than an 80% increase from the £112 million provided in 2020-21 and provided up to 14,500 bed spaces and 2,700 support staff.
Over 40,000 people have been supported into long-term accommodation since Everyone In launched at the start of the pandemic to protect rough sleepers.

Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme

Delivered over 3,000 homes against the £435 million Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP), out of a target of 6,000 homes by March 2024.
In February 2022, announced the latest round of Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme allocations of £174 million funding to create over 2,900 safe, long-term, stable move-on homes for rough sleepers by 2024.

Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant

Provided a further £27.4 million to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) to continue and expand the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant (RSDATG) to an additional 20 councils, taking the total number of councils funded to provide specialist drug and alcohol treatment services from 43 to 63. This was from a total DLUHC commitment of £52.2 million to RSDATG in 2021-22. Due to delays experienced by councils in mobilising services, the remaining funding was reallocated to other priorities, including helping those at risk of homelessness through support for rent.
At the start of 2022, over 2,000 people had engaged in structured treatment through the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant.

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

The investments this year of over £800 million in the Government’s commitment to ending rough sleeping and reducing homelessness as outlined above, is in turn supporting the delivery of the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

SDG1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

SDG3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

SDG10 – Reduce inequality within and among countries.

SDG11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

This includes the Homelessness Prevention Grant to support local authorities in ensuring people at risk of becoming homeless, across the country, get help more quickly, and to help vulnerable households with rent arrears to reduce the risk of them being evicted and becoming homeless. (SDG1 & SDG10).

Our Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme providing 6,000 units of move-on accommodation by 2024 is ensuring that people who are at risk of, or experiencing rough sleeping, have access to good quality transitional accommodation while local authorities work with them to identify more sustainable long-term accommodation.

Alongside this investment in accommodation, we are supporting local authorities to improve access to private rented sector accommodation for ex-offenders, to deliver improved temporary accommodation in London through Capital Letters and we are piloting at scale in three mayoral combined authorities the provision of Housing First accommodation for those individuals with complex needs. (SDG3 & SDG10).

The Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) provides funding for services to enable local authorities to identify and assess the needs of those people sleeping rough and to ensure they receive a service offer to help them move off the street so any episode of rough sleeping is brief. Alongside wrap around support services funded through the RSI and substance misuse services funded through the Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant programme we are helping people with a history of sleeping rough to recover and build resilience so episodes of rough sleeping are non-recurrent. (SDG1, SDG3 & SDG11).

Question 6

4.  A sustainable and resilient local government sector that delivers priority services and empowers communities

Accepted Answer

Local government is at the heart of delivering government’s objectives. In this past year we have continued to support councils to deliver the local response to the pandemic and worked with the local government system to improve the long-term outcomes for people and places. This includes a range of projects including: funding for sector improvement; empowering local leaders through devolution; providing councils with £1.55 billion to support them in responding to COVID-19; ensuring effective accountability; and building stronger communities for all.

To support this, we secured a financial settlement for the local government sector for 2021-22 that saw Core Spending Power in England rise by 2.8% in cash terms, from £49.0 billion in 2020-21 to £50.4 billion . We will continue to make sure that local government has the funding and continued support it needs within a financial and legislative framework that promotes transparency and value for money, and support the system to deal with current and any future challenges the local government sector may face.

We will support the local government sector to help deliver the government’s vision, policy and reform priorities set out in the Levelling Up White Paper published in February 2022. By 2030 every part of England that wants one will have a devolution deal with a simplified, long-term funding settlement and we have commenced work to deliver a new local government body that improves transparency on local government performance. We will take forward the ambitions of the Levelling Up White Paper with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to strengthen and connect communities, including exploring community partnership models that make it easier for local people to shape local priorities and their neighbourhoods.

Building on our existing projects and programmes we continue to promote belonging and connections between people of all backgrounds, helping to build resilient and cohesive communities, whilst also tackling harmful practices that can sow division or threaten social cohesion in some places or communities.

In November 2021, the NAO published a report on “The local government finance system in England: overview and challenges”, a summary of which can be found in the Governance Statement.

Our achievements against the published Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for 2021-22 are outlined below, covering how we delivered against the programmes and projects outlined in the ODP, and our contributions to Sustainable Development Goals.

What we achieved in 2021-22

Funding for Local Government

Delivered a Local Government Finance Settlement for 2021-22 that saw Core Spending Power in England rise by 2.8% in cash terms, from £49.0 billion in 2020-21 to £50.4 billion in 2021-22.
Secured £1.6 billion a year of new grant for local government through the 2021 Spending Review. In addition, agreed a 2% a year increase in council tax and a 1% a year increase in the Adult Social Care (ASC) precept. There will be an estimated £780 million of income from Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in 2024-25.
Secured a Local Government Finance Settlement for 2022-23 that makes available an additional £3.7 billion to councils, including funding for adult social care reform. In total, we expect local authority Core Spending Power to rise from £50.4 billion in 2021-22 to up to £54.1 billion in 2022-23.

Figure 4 - Our Performance: Final Local Government Finance Settlement 2022-23

£3.7 billion

Increase in Core Spending Power in England secured through the 2022-23 Local Government Finance Settlement.

Council Tax Rebate Scheme

Launched a £3 billion council tax rebate scheme on 3 February 2022 in response to rising energy bills, ready to make payments to almost 20 million households in early 2022-23. Councils have been funded to provide a £150 rebate payment to households living in council tax bands A – D as their main home on 1 April 2022. Every council has also received a share of a £144 million fund to provide discretionary support to any household in financial need.
Councils are expected to make payments to eligible households as soon as possible in the 2022-23 financial year. Payments will generally be made automatically to eligible households that pay their council tax by direct debit (because councils already hold their bank account details). All other eligible households will be contacted with details of how to claim their money. All rebate payments must be made by 30 September and all discretionary support payments by 30 November. The Department will monitor delivery progress through monthly data returns and an assurance exercise, prior to reconciling against actual spend after the scheme closes.

Supporting Local Government Service Delivery and Improvement

Developed an enhanced approach to supporting local government improvement by considering key delivery outcomes for the sector and working with sector representatives to target support effectively. This includes funding a £19 million programme of sector support that aims to continually build the sector’s capability. Key aims of this programme are to deliver peer support programmes; enhancing financial resilience; leadership development and supporting safer and more sustainable communities.
Implemented a programme to strengthen the sector’s commercial delivery and to ensure that it represents best value to citizens. This is being achieved through extending centrally designed training, advice and guidance, and market and supplier intelligence to the sector and influencing public procurement policy so that it is practically deliverable at a local level.
Supported improvement in contract management capability throughout the sector by piloting a series of initiatives including the Contract Management Pioneer Programme.
Piloted hands-on sourcing support to four Councils applying best practice frameworks established in the Government’s Sourcing Playbooks to real life scenarios.
Maintained a strong focus on promoting cyber health and continued to ensure local authorities have the right information to make cyber security improvements. Invested over £10 million in direct remediation support to local authorities to help tackle critical issues such as ensuring effective backups are in place.
Secured an additional £37.8 million funding over the next three years at the Spending Review 2021, to continue to expand the cyber health work and launch a new fund to identify and promote replicable and effective ways of improving cyber resilience in councils. Supporting councils to improve their cyber resilience is not only vital to ensuring public services are reliably delivered; it is also key to safeguarding our security and our data and building a resilient and prosperous digital UK.
Launched the Partnerships for People and Place (formerly known as the Shared Outcomes Fund Place Model Project) to develop an evidence base to pilot a new approach of policy design and delivery, focusing on place-based initiatives, which create better cross-government coordination and drives more effective spending and policymaking decisions across Whitehall. 13 local areas were selected through a transparent and competitive process to help deliver the programme.

Empowering local leaders

Published a devolution framework in the Levelling Up White Paper, setting out a clear menu of options for places in England that wish to unlock the benefits of devolution, as part of the government’s recognition that strong and dynamic local leadership is critical to levelling up.
Supported the implementation of locally developed proposals to reorganise local government in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and in Somerset. On Friday 18 March 2022, Structural Change Orders came into force which provide for the establishment of new unitary authorities in three areas – Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset.
Announced a new independent data body to collect data and assess performance of the Local Government (LG) sector in the Levelling Up White Paper. The new body will focus on improving the transparency of siloed and disparate data collection to enhance the Government’s understanding of place-based leadership, quality of local service delivery and organisational efficacy. It will therefore be an authoritative source of information to help government, local leaders and the citizen to fully understand local government performance. This will drive transparency and enable best practice to be identified and shared.

Local Government Oversight and Accountability

The Department has maintained its focus on ensuring effective scrutiny of local government through external audit.
The Department’s spring update to the Government’s response to the original Redmond Review covered all of Redmond’s recommendations. It set out the Department’s intention to establish Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA), the new regulator, being established to replace the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) as system leader for local audit within a simplified local audit framework. The Department consulted on these proposals and published a response in March 2022. The Department has started work with the FRC on its shadow system leader arrangements following the appointment of FRC’s new Director of Local Audit.
Timeliness issues increased in the past year. Challenges around the timeliness of local audit were highlighted by the Redmond Review in 2019. However, these were exacerbated by the pandemic, and completed audits took an accelerated downward trend with only 9% of 2020/21 audits reported as completed in September 2021. Main issues contributing to the challenges are auditor supply and increasing workload and pressure following the high profile corporate failures such as Carillion and Patisserie Valerie. Local authority capacity to prepare accounts and finance functions have also been impacted by the pandemic.
The Department in its interim system leader role through the recently established Liaison Committee, worked with key sector partners to prioritise action and agree a package of sector-wide measures in response. The package was published in December 2021 and went further than Redmond’s recommendations. The measures included:
- Paying £15 million of 2021-22 funding to over 500 local bodies to assist with the increasing fees of local audits;
- Providing councils with £45 million additional funding over the course of the next Spending Review;
- Strengthening training and qualification options for local auditors and audit committee members;
- Reviewing whether certain accounting and audit requirements could be reduced on a temporary basis;
- Extending the 2021-22 audit deadline to 30 November 2022, and then 30 September until 2027-28.
The Department was clear Public Sector Auditor Appointments Ltd (PSAA) remains best placed to act as the appointing body and oversee the next procurement, due to their strong technical expertise. The Department lay new regulations to provide the appointing person with greater flexibility around fee-setting and fee variations.
Worked with Public Sector Auditor Appointments Ltd (PSAA), supporting on their procurement strategy. By March 2022, the PSAA notified that 99% of eligible bodies had opted in to its national auditor appointment scheme to run from April 2023.
Continued to work with individual councils to support improvement where the evidence indicates it is necessary. In June 2021, the then Secretary of State appointed four Commissioners to Liverpool City Council. The directions provided the Commissioners with powers over the highways, regeneration and property management functions of the Authority and their associated governance, which included non-executive functions relating to the appointment and dismissal of statutory officers and Assistant Director of Audit and Governance. The Secretary of State also asked Commissioners to specifically support the Council in its broader service delivery and finance in so far as they raise concerns for the Council’s wider Improvement journey.
The Commissioners submitted their first report to the Secretary of State on 5 October 2021, setting out that the Council is at the beginning of a long improvement journey and expressing concerns about the Council’s finance and wider service delivery. The Commissioners are working with the Council to assist them in taking a whole council approach to improvement. They have requested realistic improvement plans that take account of the urgency and the capacity to deliver; with a view to setting a sustainable long-term financial plan, improving corporate governance, delivering basic services well and meeting the requirements of the statutory directions.
The Secretary of State has also appointed Commissioners in two further councils, in Slough Borough Council in December 2021 and Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in March 2022. Slough Borough Council is one of three councils to have issued a Section 114 notice since March 2020. Other such notices were issued by London Borough of Croydon and Nottingham City Council, where Independent Improvement and Assurance Panel/Board are in place, following the non-statutory reviews undertaken to ensure poor financial management and governance failings are addressed.

Building stronger communities and improving outcomes

Secured an additional £200 million investment for the Supporting Families programme, taking the total planned investment to £695 million over the Spending Review period 2022-2025.
As of January 2022, the Supporting Families programme in local authorities reported over 55,000 successful family outcomes from 2021-22, representing 79% of outcomes funded through the programme. Since the programme started in 2015, over 470,000 families have been directly helped and sustained significant outcomes (Figure 5).
Allocated £7.9 million Data Accelerator Fund to support 10 data sharing projects across England to improve joined-up working between councils, NHS trusts and police to ensure children and families receive the right help at the right time. The Data Accelerator Fund is funded through HMT’s Shared Outcomes Fund and is managed by Supporting Families.

Figure 5 - Our Performance: Supporting Families

Local Authorities have been funded to achieve successful family outcomes with

509,751 families

Families where successful family outcomes were achieved

470,376 between 2015 and January 2022

In 2021-22, areas were funded to achieve successful family outcomes with 69,831 families and as of January 2022 had achieved 55,421 (79%).

Source – Supporting Families annual report 2022

Continued to work with the local government sector to test innovative approaches to seek to drive lasting change, improving outcomes for families and adults experiencing multiple disadvantage and empowering communities. In July 2021, the 15 local partnerships funded by Changing Futures - a 3 year £64 million programme announced in 2020 – began. Made excellent progress in mobilising both front line and multi-agency system level interventions aimed at improving the way services work for adults experiencing multiple disadvantage.
Designed and launched the £150 million Community Ownership Fund (COF) in 2021, part of the Levelling Up agenda to help communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland take ownership of assets and amenities at risk of closure. Since July 2021, community groups have been able to bid for matched-funding to help them buy or take over local community assets at risk of being lost, to run as community-owned businesses. Further detail on the COF achievements in 2021-22 are contained under the levelling up investments funds.
Funded 42 charities, community groups and local authorities across every region in England for Windrush Day 2021. Interim findings indicate in-person and online participation of over 70,000 people with over 11,800 volunteering hours devoted to running projects.

Support for New Arrivals

Homes for Ukraine

Launched the Homes for Ukraine Scheme on 14 March 2022, with applications opening on 18 March 2022. The scheme provides an uncapped humanitarian route to the UK for Ukrainians who can obtain a visa without having family ties here but who do match themselves with UK based individuals who can provide accommodation for at least six months. This complements the Ukraine Family Scheme led by the Home Office, which enables family members of Ukrainian nationals settled in the UK to come and join them here. As at 13 June 2022, over 77,000 Ukrainians have now arrived in the UK under both schemes, with over 50,000 coming through via the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Distributed £1.89 million in grant funding to local authorities to establish 29 welcome points in key ports of arrival. This has enabled Ukrainian arrivals to receive basic humanitarian aid and access both translation services and advice to support their onward journey.
Provided information to support sponsors, guests and local authorities using the scheme, including regularly updating published guidance. This includes a welcome pack for people arriving in the UK from Ukraine, available in English, Ukrainian and Russian and a quick guide to services arrivals may need in their first week in the UK.
Supported sponsors who offer accommodation to individuals under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme. Sponsors are eligible for an optional ‘thank you payment’ of £350 per month per household, for as long as the guest remains in their accommodation for up to 12 months.
Provided funding at a rate of £10,500 per person under the Homes for Ukraine Scheme to councils to enable them to provide support to Ukrainian families to rebuild their lives and fully integrate into communities. Within the £10,500 is a £200 subsistence payment that councils will provide to each Ukraine guest under the scheme which does not need to be repaid.
Published a list of Recognised Providers – voluntary and community sector organisations running schemes which provide support for and help match people coming from Ukraine with sponsors in the UK.

Hong Kong British National Overseas

Implemented the Welcome Programme to help British National Overseas [BNO] status holders and their families arriving from Hong Kong settle successfully in the UK, following the announcement in April 2021 of up to £43.1 million for the programme.
As part of the programme, produced a GOV.UK landing page and Welcome Pack in English and Cantonese with information for new arrivals on how to settle into life in the UK, and access public services such as registering for a doctor and finding a school link, and funded 12 virtual ‘Welcome Hubs’ across the UK working with local partners, and 47 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to provide support on employability, education, mental health, wellbeing and a Hate Crime Reporting Service; and English language funding and support to those at risk of destitution.
We made changes to eligibility regulations on the Allocation of Housing and Homelessness in England in June 2021, so that Hong Kong British Nationals are eligible for social housing and homelessness assistance in the UK, where the ‘no recourse to public funds’ condition attached to their leave is lifted should they become destitute.

Afghan Resettlement

Supported individuals and their families from Afghanistan with resettlement in the UK through the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) Scheme and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), also ensuring eligible British Nationals receive the same support as those on ACRS and ARAP.
Produced a Welcome Pack, aimed at supporting Afghan arrivals with integration into local communities, including information about finding employment, access to healthcare and education, legal rights and responsibilities and basic information about UK life.
Launched a Housing Portal in August 2021 to receive offers of housing support for Afghan arrivals, supporting the resettlement of families into suitable and more permanent housing. The portal allows landlords to state whether they have employment offers, supporting economic integration.
Set up a bespoke local engagement team within the Afghan Resettlement team, with named points of contact for each region across the country and Devolved Governments. Alongside this an Afghan Resettlement Local Authority Network (ARLAN), to facilitate knowledge-sharing across councils, accelerate accommodation offers, and develop local integration initiatives.
In collaboration with Home Office and Ministry of Defence, developed a menu of cultural orientation resources to support councils in delivering integration support to Afghan families who have arrived under ARAP and ACRS, as well as eligible British Nationals.
Supported the ‘Jobs First’ pilot as part of a cross Government case-working team to identify and address barriers which prevent residents from taking up employment and moving into settled accommodation

Administered the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) for Integration Fund (EFIF), which empowers those who speak little or no English by boosting language skills and building confidence to unleash their potential, reduce isolation and participate in their local community.
Continued to fund 28 of the original 30 local authorities from 2020-21, two of the original local authorities are now self-sufficient in running the ESOL for Integration Fund (EFIF). This single fund continues to bring together previous DLUHC ESOL funding streams to make it easier for local authorities to deliver tailored solutions that are right for their communities.
Dame Sara Khan was appointed by the Prime Minister as the government’s Independent Adviser for Social Cohesion and Resilience, working out of DLUHC. Sara will examine extremism at a local level and its harm and impact on individuals and local communities. She is hearing from both victims of extremism and those on the frontline working to combat it, to understand and ultimately counteract its effects to develop recommendations on how Government can better support and protect victims of extremism and those working to stamp it out, as well as communities that are affected.

Faith, belief and places of worship

Announced a £1 million Faith New Deal Pilot Fund; a competitive grant programme to test approaches to supporting faith-based organisations to lever their resources including volunteers and community buildings to address debt, food poverty, loneliness, well-being and employment within their communities and to build trust between national government, local government and faith groups.
Issued a call for evidence as part of the review on faith engagement by the PM’s Independent Adviser, Colin Bloom. 20,000 individuals and organisations responded to the Bloom Review’s call for evidence. This information is being fed into Colin’s final report which is due to publish in 2022/23.

UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre

Continued the work to build a national Memorial and Learning Centre in central London, to commemorate victims of the Holocaust and to educate about the importance of combatting intolerance and hatred. The Memorial will honour the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust, and all other victims of Nazi persecution. The co-located Learning Centre will explore the role of Britain’s Parliament and democratic institutions - what we did and what more we could have done - to tackle the persecution of the Jewish people and other groups. It will also focus on subsequent genocides.

Specific Challenges

The Department closely monitors risks to local government, and this will remain important given the operating environment, including supply chain challenges, inflationary pressures and the risks of cyber attack. A cyber incident occurred in late December 2021. Escalation triggers were not met and the affected council is managing well. We continue to monitor and working closely across government on cyber security.

Latest published PSAA (Public Sector Audit Appointments Ltd) completed audits show that only 9% completed their 2020-21 audits by the deadline of 30 September. By March 2022, this had increased to 52%, with 89% completed for 2019-20. This continues to reflect ongoing issues affecting the stability of the local audit market. Before Christmas, we published a package of measures to support improved timeliness and market stability. The Department is also continuing to work closely with PSAA to consider the contingencies in place for their next procurement. Our broader consultation response on our system leader proposals was published on 31 May 2022.

Three councils (Croydon, Nottingham and Slough) have issued Section 114 notices since March 2020. Independent improvement and assurance panels are in place in Croydon and Nottingham following the non-statutory reviews into the councils to ensure poor financial management and governance failings are addressed. On 25 October 2021 the department announced that intervention was required in Slough. This followed the Slough external assurance review that concluded that Slough Borough Council was failing its Best Value Duty and that intervention was needed to secure its compliance with the Best Value duty. Commissioners were appointed for Slough on 1 December 2021.

Homes for Ukraine

Following the launch, we continue to develop and deliver the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Decisions on the design of the scheme have purposefully balanced the need to respond urgently to the situation in Ukraine with the need to keep both Ukrainian arrivals and sponsors safe.

Ensuring that both sponsors and guests are safe and secure in their sponsorship arrangements is a critical aspect of the scheme. We are working with voluntary and community sector organisations who are looking to responsibly facilitate matches between sponsors and guests as part of the scheme. Sponsors and all adults in sponsors’ households, as well as Ukrainians arriving under the scheme, are then subject to standard security checks by the Home Office before visas are granted. Accommodation and DBS checks are conducted by local authorities as soon as possible after arrival, as a second layer of safeguarding. We are continuing to monitor the effectiveness of our approach, working closely with partners inside and outside government.

To make this scheme a success an ongoing national effort is needed – with devolved governments, local authorities, charities, faith groups, businesses and communities all working

together to provide much needed support to Ukrainians arriving under the scheme. We continue to work collaboratively to provide access to healthcare, public funds, employment, education and other support and ensure public services are able to meet demand.

UK Holocaust Memorial & Learning Centre

The UK Holocaust Memorial & Learning Centre programme is appealing the High Court decision to overturn the planning consent granted in July 2021.

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

A sustainable and resilient local government sector that delivers priority services and empowers communities outcome supports the following SDGs:

SDG1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

SDG3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

SDG7 – Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

SDG8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

SDG9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive & sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.

SDG10 – Reduce inequality within and among countries.

SDG11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

SDG13 - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

SDG16 - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

To support local authorities with their ongoing COVID-19 Response role, the Government allocated over £12 billion directly to councils in 2020-21 and 2021-22, over £6 billion of which was not ringfenced. (SDG3).

In the recent spending review, HMT announced £7 million in 2022-23 to fund green spaces across the UK on unused, undeveloped, or derelict land that will broaden accessibility for all. Defra will bolster this with a further £2 million. (SDG3).

The Supporting Families programme, together with DfE, secured an additional £200 million of funding, increasing the budget to £695 million to continue delivering the programme for the next three years helping thousands of families across England to get the help they need to address multiple disadvantages through a whole family approach. (SDG1 & SDG10).

The Changing Futures programme has commenced in partnership with The National Lottery as part of the Shared Outcomes Fund with funding allocated to 15 local areas to mobilise and deliver a programme that improves the way that local systems and services work for adults experiencing multiple disadvantage. (SDG1 & SDG10). DLUHC is also running a new one year £1 million funding to test targeted interventions to support the education of GRT children and young people. (SDG1 & SDG10).

The Government has now set Carbon Budget 6 and has published the Net Zero Strategy, which clarifies the role of local government in delivering local climate action. This includes committing to an engagement Forum for HMG and local government to work together to reduce emissions and capitalise on benefits. (SDG7 & SDG13).

We have provided targeted support to local authorities on the cusp of best value failure to achieve rapid improvement and cultural change. Where necessary, the Government has also intervened in local authorities on a statutory basis to achieve urgent and lasting improvement. For the small number of local authorities that have unique circumstances or residual issues that have resulted in unmanageable pressures, the Government provided additional financial support to these authorities on an exceptional basis. (SDG16)

We are improving local government and service delivery in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset through, subject to Parliament’s approval, implementing three local led proposals to unitarise local government. (SDG16).

The work reported against other outcomes for SDG8, SDG9 & SDG11 is cross-cutting with this outcome as Local Government plays a key role in the delivery of the work.

Question 7

5.  Ensure the benefits of the Union are clear, visible and understood by all citizens; and reforming the constitution and sustaining our democracy

Accepted Answer

We continue to lead the delivery of the UK Government’s (UKG) priority to ensure the benefits of the Union are clear, visible and understood by all citizens working across the UK Government. This includes work to strengthen intergovernmental working, and engaging all levels of government, business and civic society together to deliver effective outcomes for citizens across the UK.

The Levelling Up White Paper, published in February 2022, followed extensive UK-wide engagement, and sets out an ambitious vision to improve living standards and increase opportunity in all parts of the UK. The clear plan to level up every corner of the UK is underpinned by 12 ambitious “missions” to anchor the agenda to 2030. Delivering against these missions will require close working with the devolved governments and with wider partners across the UK to ensure that everyone in the UK benefits.

The UK and Scottish Government have made a landmark agreement to establish two new Green Freeports in Scotland, which will have a simplified customs process, offer tax measures to incentivise private business investment, carefully considered planning reforms to facilitate much-needed construction and additional targeted funding for infrastructure improvements in Freeport areas to level up communities and increase employment opportunities.

Most recently, we supported the UK-wide development and launch of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund on 13 April 2022, which will see places that need it most draw up plans this year to deliver on their local priorities, based on a conditional allocation of funding over the next three years. This represents the culmination of a concerted effort and joint working across government, with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and local partners across the UK. Through this fund, communities across the United Kingdom will benefit from £2.6 billion of funding to help spread opportunity and level up the country. As part of the fund, local areas across England will see £1.58 billion, Scotland £212 million, Wales £585 million and Northern Ireland £127 million made available.

The UK Government is committed to making the civil service representative of all communities across the UK. The UK government has committed to move 22,000 Civil Service roles from London and the South East to communities across the UK by 2030, including to UK Government Hubs in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the recent Levelling Up White Paper, commitments and locations were published, with over 15,000 roles committed to move by 2025.

We are also delivering Government Manifesto (UK Parliamentary General Election 2019) and other Ministerial commitments as part of the Government’s electoral reform agenda. The Government is seeking to strengthen the integrity of our electoral system and ensure that our elections remain secure, fair, modern, and transparent. The Government manifesto set out this commitment to protecting our democracy and ensuring that it remains fit for the modern age. This is a complex programme which we will continue to progress in 22-23.

Our achievements against the published Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for 2021-22 are outlined below, covering how we delivered against the programmes and projects outlined in the ODP.

What we achieved in 2021-22

Strengthening the Union

Strengthened the arrangements through which UKG engages with devolved governments and partners across the UK via the recently agreed arrangements in the joint review of intergovernmental relations, which set out how the UK and devolved governments will work closely together to deliver for people across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Continued to work collaboratively with the devolved governments across a wide range of areas. The Intergovernmental Relations Annual Report highlights that there were over 440 intergovernmental ministerial meetings alone in 2021.
The Secretary of State continued to meet regularly with First Ministers of the devolved governments, including the recent first meeting of the Inter-ministerial Standing Committee.
Worked very closely and at pace with the devolved governments and institutions to establish the Homes for Ukraine Scheme, supporting citizens across the UK opening their homes and providing them with security, stability and safety.
Supported the development of UK-wide growth funds, ensuring these deliver for communities in all parts of the UK. In Autumn 2021, UKG announced the first allocations of these funds, providing £450 million to fund projects across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland through the Levelling Up Fund, the Community Ownership Fund and UK Community Renewal Fund.

· Worked with the Office for National Statistics to deliver a new Concordat on Statistics, which refreshes the commitment of the UK government and devolved governments to work together towards a more coherent statistical picture across the UK. Collecting and analysing data that is comparable UK-wide allows us to share evidence and learning with each other, to support better outcomes for citizens across the whole of the UK.

Continued to deliver on our ambitious programme to increase the devolution capability of civil servants across the UK, delivered in collaboration with devolved governments and UK Government Departments. Our work also includes a commitment to increase meaningful intergovernmental loans and secondments to improve intergovernmental working which is reflected in the Government Statement of Reform. There is ongoing work taking place across government in support of this, with a number of these changes building on recommendations made by Lord Dunlop in his review of UK Government Union Capability. For example, each UK Government department now has a nominated non-executive director with responsibility for the Union, with these non-executive directors supported by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
The Union Strategy Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister and supported by the Union Policy Implementation Committee, chaired by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations have continued to meet throughout the year, and are focused on ensuring that the Union is at the heart of UK Government decision making.

Reforming the constitution and sustaining our democracy

As part of the Electoral Integrity Programme, delivered the May 2021 elections effectively and safely, implementing Covid-19 safeguards.
Introduced the Elections Bill to Parliament in July 2021 to support the delivery of the government’s manifesto commitments on electoral integrity and our wider democratic system.

Question 8

6.  Strategic Enablers

Accepted Answer

We continued to strengthen our corporate centre and functional performance to enable the delivery of our strategic priorities. This includes a continued focus on ensuring we have skilled, diverse and high-performing people, who are supported and trusted by empowering and inclusive leaders.

We made strong progress against our Places for Growth ambitions, increasing the number of roles based out of London by more than 100% against our March 2020 baseline. Our primary focus has been in Wolverhampton, where we successfully opened our new Headquarters in November. We have also established new offices in Edinburgh and Cardiff and will move into a new office in Northern Ireland in 2022.

In line with the Government’s Working Safely during COVID-19 Guidance, we carried out safety risk assessments across all the department’s properties and reconfigured spaces to put in place COVID-19 safety measures. This resulted in reduced office capacity. These measures were reviewed on an ongoing basis as guidance was revised throughout the year and all our offices were operating at full capacity by the end of the year with the exception of Cardiff, reflecting the different rules that remained in place across Wales.

We also supported the efficiency and security of the department through investment in technical solutions, from the date the lockdown was announced all staff were enabled to work from home using their standard issued office equipment. From day one due to the comprehensive technical solution in place colleagues were able to operate seamlessly and securely either from home or from the office. All offices have full hybrid facilities, which continues to build on our core tenet of a place-based department by removing geographical boundaries.

Cyber Security continues to be a priority for the department, and we have worked closely with relevant government agencies, including Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA), to ensure that the standards we operate to are in line with the targets set for government departments.

The development of digital services in the department continues to be a core focus. We have developed the citizen-facing energy performance service. This year this service moved from public beta to live, one of only a handful of government services to do so, and pivotal to this was the requirement to demonstrate that we had a sustainable plan to meet user needs in the future. We are continuing to develop digital services which inform leaseholders on building safety remediation, streamline our funding processes across the department and streamline our data collection processes with local authorities.

As part of our stewardship responsibilities, we also provided digital services across our Arm’s Length Bodies and assured compliance with government digital service standards.

We are continuing to strengthen our governance and the controls we have in place around the delivery of progress against each of our outcomes, strengthened the role and process of our Investment Sub-Committee, and begun implementing a new Risk Action Plan and Delivery Improvement Plan to mature our management of risks and major projects. We continued to experience issues with underspending and, as such, improvements in forecasting are a significant priority for the coming year.

What we achieved in 2021-22

Workforce, skills and location

Following the launch of our departmental Capability Strategy in May 2021, a series of foundational activities have been undertaken to begin increasing capability and become a learning organisation. Achievements include the launch of the DLUHC Learning hub, bringing in additional capacity via skills-based recruitment campaigns and developing the skills of existing colleagues.
We concluded a successful external apprenticeship recruitment campaign, resulting in the recruitment of 36 apprentices in London and Wolverhampton across the policy and project delivery professions. The department achieved 68 apprenticeship starts in 2021-22, which is slightly below our annual apprenticeship target of apprenticeship starts equating to 2.3% of our workforce size (including our Civil Service Arm’s Length Bodies) but represents a significant improvement on 2020-21, when nine starts were achieved.
The department received the results of the 2021 Civil Service People Survey in December. The response rate this year was slightly lower at 88% in line with a general decrease across the Civil Service, but still well above the Civil Service benchmark (75%). Our employee engagement index remained very positive at 66%.
Of the 16 largest government departments, DLUHC is now first for Learning & Development, and joint first for My Manager themes. We increased our investment in growing professional skills in DLUHC, especially in delivery where we expanded the number of project and programme leadership development placements within our senior team.
We are working closely with the Government Skills and Curriculum Unit and Civil Service HR on implementation of centrally led skills initiatives set out in the Declaration on Government Reform. In particular, we set provisional targets for expanding inward and outward secondments during 2022 to a level that will cumulatively represent 10% of our SCS and 5% of our G6 and G7 workforce (using January 2022 as the baseline), and we have included inward secondments as a recruitment option as part of our high-profile campaign to recruit Levelling-Up Directors.
As part of this work, we have also developed an exchange initiative with the District Councils’ Network to build stronger and deeper connections between DLUHC and our local authority partners. The programme provides a mechanism for bringing place-focused perspectives into DLUHC’s work, while also helping to develop functional and leadership skills in the next generation of local authority leaders. Colleagues are in place or in the process of onboarding.
We opened offices in Edinburgh, Wolverhampton, Leeds, Birmingham and Cardiff, with an office in Northern Ireland to follow shortly. We became operational in the Darlington Economic Campus with c40 colleagues in place or in the process of onboarding, out of a target of 30 for 2021-22.
The percentage of Senior Civil Servants based outside of London increased from 6% (headcount of 7) in March 2020 to 15% (headcount of 26) as at March 2022, as we progress towards a target of 37.5% by 2025 and 50% by 2030 in DLUHC.

Innovation, technology and data

As a department of place, we have focused on ensuring that our people can work from any UK location. We invested significantly on collaboration and audio-visual to ensure that the tools deployed enable the inclusive working model that the department has set out. In addition, our solution has proved extremely robust with no downtime experienced by users.
We continued to maintain and invest in cyber protection. We are aligned with the Government Security Group, attained a green audit review from GIAA on cyber and towards the end of the year, we successfully utilised protocols and policies in response to cyber threats and global software vulnerabilities, and latterly the heightened awareness as a result of Ukraine.
We developed a new modular digital funding service design which is currently in beta. Work has been carried out on parking appeals, electoral integrity and support for leaseholders on building safety. In addition, we started to automate and improve elements of our internal services, such as our business case approvals process, the management of correspondence and onboarding of resources.
Our proposed Digital Land platform passed its Alpha assessment in January 2022. We launched a local plans pathfinder in June 2021, awarding £800k to 10 Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) to look at sites data, test a new style local plan prototype, and understand the barriers LPAs might have to make the data needed for local plans available.
We added roughly 120,000 pieces of data, from 370 new resources and across 20 different datasets, to our Planning Data Platform. The PropTech Engagement Fund was launched with 2 rounds of funding totalling £4.35 million, working with 46 LPAs to accelerate adoption of digital citizen engagement tools and best practices. We have finalised our legal clauses to enable a data-driven planning system, which has been an exciting journey taking lessons learnt from projects over the past 2-3 years.
Finally, our digital planning software moved into beta with a new phase of collaboration and delivery with local planning authorities and software providers. In January 2022, we continued to build on the success of the Reducing Invalid Planning Applications (RIPA) and Back Office Planning System (BOPS) private beta launch, by announcing 8 new councils joining the projects. We also launched the incumbent software Expression of Interest, with 8 councils leading new Pathfinder projects that will explore ways to enhance their planning services by working closely with existing software providers.
A notable service that was developed this year was the design and build of the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) service; a service which is end-user facing and has generated a significantly improved and lower cost user experience. We have also continued to iterate the grant funding service seeking ways to further enhance this service. Our Cyber Support programme has continued to prioritise remediation in high-risk councils. On top of £4.4 million funding in 2020-21, in 2021-22 we provided a further £9.5 million of grant funding to an additional 79 councils to help them mitigate cyber security vulnerabilities and facilitated access to specialist cyber support and expertise to help drive improvements.
The Local Digital Fund provided £4.6 million over 2021-22, which supported the development of modern software and services for councils. These new software and services are cyber secure, efficient and better meet the needs of citizens. The funding has supported nine new projects and provided continued funding for the further development of eight projects
This year we appointed our new Chief Data Officer, with an initial focus on developing the levelling up data strategy, but a remit that spans the department in totality. Our ambition moving forward is to ensure that we have internal and external data services that drive improved policy and increase efficiency. As a data centric department, we have invested in improving how we collate data from multiple sources in an efficient and effective manner to enable it to be ingested and then used for enhanced decision making. Our case level data service is currently in beta.
Working in partnership with Homes England, we made significant progress on linking multiple, detailed data sources on land and property to enrich our evidence for various Departmental policy priorities. For example, we developed re-usable methods to merge property-level data from Ordnance Survey, Land Registry and DLUHC’s Energy Performance Certificates registers and provided important new insights for the Building Safety Programme and to assess the impact of Leasehold Policy reform options. We will continue to refine and extend these methods as we apply them to additional policy priorities, particularly around Levelling Up.
We have developed a competency framework for the data skills we want our people to develop. We also have a medium-term goal to establish skills profiles across the Department that will enable the skills gap in this area to be quantified. This has been supported by the addition of data and analytics courses to the department’s Learning Hub to enable people to develop the competencies.

Delivery, evaluation and collaboration

We developed the first Outcome Delivery Plan (ODP) for the department, approved by Cabinet Office, articulating our priority outcomes and how they will be delivered.
We made improvements to the effectiveness of the Investment Sub-Committee (ISC) during the year. We introduced an enhanced quality assurance process with functional representatives required to provide feedback on each case submitted, and a requirement for the responsible SRO or Director to attend the ISC meetings. This has improved the quality of cases considered by ISC.
We reported monthly on progress in delivery against the department’s priority outcomes to portfolio boards, the Executive Team, and the Secretary of State (from October 2021), with quarterly reporting to the Non-Ministerial Board. Departmental reporting is being improved over the next year to better meet the needs of the new department.
We provided timely reporting in response to Cabinet Office central reporting commissions on the ODP (quarterly), Prime Ministers Top 35 programmes (monthly) and Sustainable Development Goals from FCDO (bi-annually).
We developed a Delivery Improvement Plan (DIP) in conjunction with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) to enhance project delivery across the department with a focus on three areas – people, principles and performance, which align with the IPA’s mandate and the Project Delivery Functional Standard. Actions in the DIP include scheduling a series of major project assurance reviews led by the Accounting Officer, strengthening our capability and culture around major project delivery, a new stage gate and assurance process to better align internal assurance with the project delivery lifecycle, and new tools for the end-to-end project delivery process.
The department again had significant challenges with underspend this year of just over £2 billion, including £1.5 billion surrendered or reprofiled in the Supplementary Estimates. Within this, around £1bn is attributed to a one-off instance of advance payments made to the GLA for the Affordable Housing Programme, which we uncovered during the year as we looked to strengthen governance and focus on delivery. Additionally, there was significant underspend in the Building Safety Fund, reflecting some inherent uncertainty on timing and ongoing efforts to refine assumptions and enhance modelling. Nevertheless, the department is addressing its concerns around forecasting and ensuring that accountabilities are effective.
DLUHC is an active participant in the functional standards that are led from Cabinet Office. In the last two SCS functional performance surveys, we have scored highly on both completion rates and how well the functions work together. The Analysis, Commercial and Digital functions were amongst the highest scoring functions across departments in the most recent survey.
This year, we worked with the Cabinet Office to pilot a new process to assess Coordinated Function Delivery, which has since been rolled-out across Whitehall. In addition, a series of deep dives were held in the year with a targeted number of key functions to assess performance against their functional standard and agree on priorities for continuous improvement.

Sustainability

The Government Property Agency (GPA) is the Department’s property delivery partner. GPA take the lead in setting Net Zero and related sustainability standards for our offices and are committed to delivering to them. GPA deliver and manage all our estate to meet these standards. In the past year, the Department has opened new offices in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Leeds, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Darlington. GPA has begun a programme of Net Zero upgrades in locations where we have no immediate intention to move.
The newer offices on the estate, including our headquarters in Wolverhampton, are already configured in line with Government Property Agency (GPA) best practice to support effective smarter working. We have a programme in train to bring many of the remaining offices, including our London Headquarters, to this standard by the end of 2023. This will remain a key focus as we shift the department to more flexible working practices and operating across multiple sites.
Smarter Working enables significant reductions in carbon consumption through less commuting and business travel. We have seen an increasing number of staff take advantage of the smarter working facilities and practices we have put in place to allow a blend of office and remote working. During the year investments have been made to provide enhanced audio-visual equipment in all offices, with training provided to staff. There were 8 office projects completed in the year.

EU Exit Transition

Housing

Following the end of the Grace Period on 30 June 2021, we published a revised Allocation of Accommodation Statutory Guidance and Homelessness Code of Guidance in July 2021 to clarify that local authorities should treat certain EEA and Swiss nationals who apply to the EU Settlement Scheme after 30 June 2021 as eligible for social housing and homelessness assistance.
We made further changes to eligibility regulations on the Allocation of Housing and Homelessness in England in March 2022 so that people fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and granted leave under the Ukraine Family Scheme, Homes for Ukraine Scheme and Ukraine Extension Scheme are eligible for social housing and homelessness assistance.
COVID-19 and EU Exit have had some impact on the housebuilding sector although this is not always easy to disentangle. We closely monitor analysis from the sector, and maintain a continuous ongoing dialogue with the housebuilding sector – including housing associations, developers of different sizes, supply chain and investors - to develop as clear a picture as possible.

Local Government and Resilience

DLUHC has continued to work with other government departments to ensure that transition funding requirements for local authorities are considered and provided. DLUHC has also worked to ensure that the local authority perspective is highlighted and recognised regarding the implementation of the remaining transition milestones around Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) import controls, which will come into effect in 2022.
DLUHC has worked closely with Kent Resilience Forum, and local responders in other port areas, as they prepared for and responded to the impacts of changes to border checks across the short straits.

Building Safety

Policy development and engagement with stakeholders continues to ensure a successful implementation of the end of recognition of CE marking for construction products in January 2023.

Challenges facing the department

The principal risks facing the department are articulated in the Governance Statement. These include risks around Local Government capacity and funding, project delivery capacity and capability, strategy risks e.g. ambitious legislative timetable, as well as financial risks. Specific risks and issues faced in the delivery of our outcomes are outlined in the sections above.

This section highlights some cross-cutting challenges for the year ahead, which we expect to be at least as challenging for delivery as previous years, and potentially more so. The department and economy are still dealing with impacts of COVID-19; and the invasion of Ukraine has led both to new responsibilities for the department (notably Homes for Ukraine), as well as compounding difficulties in the operating environment experienced by others too (e.g. inflation, supply chain constraints, risk of cyber-attack, and general uncertainty). In this context, the ability of Local Government to deliver effectively remains one of the department’s top risks and is closely monitored.

Inflation

As budgets are set in nominal terms, rising prices risk reducing expected delivery across most areas of the department’s business, compounded in some instances by supply chain challenges (see further on housing and levelling up above). The Government is taking steps to place a renewed focus on efficiency, to ensure that departments can continue to deliver on their commitments, despite inflationary pressures. The Department will monitor and manage its resources to accommodate anticipated inflationary pressures, including reviews with HM Treasury.

Corporate challenges

The year ahead will be our first full year of implementing hybrid working, following the return to office working. The department has a designated senior lead for hybrid working, who is also making refurbishments to support a smarter working environment with flexible digital solutions.

The reduction to the size of the Civil Service will need careful management to minimise risks.

We will continue our focus on strengthening project delivery across the department, progressing the actions in our Delivery Improvement Plan, including a new programme of major project assurance reviews for the Accounting Officer, a new stage gate and assurance process, strengthening project delivery capability and culture, and new tools for the end-to-end project delivery process. Alongside this, the department is continuing to address its concerns around forecasting to reduce underspends in 2022-23 and ensure that accountabilities are effective.

Our Expenditure and Financial Position Group Budget 2021-22

This section explains the 2021-22 Departmental Group budget. Actual expenditure compared to budget can be found In the Statement of Outturn Against Parliamentary Supply.

Our total net expenditure budget was £42.74 billion . This is then split between two segments; local government (£21.45 billion: £21.49 billion expenditure offset by £0.04 billion income) and other priority outcomes (£21.29 billion: £30.64 billion expenditure offset by £9.35 billion income).

Local Government

Local government funding is provided to local authorities, with the Local Share, Revenue Support grants, business rates relief, top-ups and in year outturn payments available to spend on any service. The £21.45 billion available to local authorities included allocations to the following areas:

the local share of business rates retained by local authorities to spend locally (£1.67billion);
COVID-19 Support (£10.46 billion, of which £5.83 billion relates to Expanded Retail Discount programme, £2.49 billion to support lost revenue and the remainder to relieve additional pressures arising from the pandemic; offset by £5.6 billion in recovery of Business Rate Relief funding provided to local authorities during the pandemic);
Social Care grants including the improved Better Care Fund (£3.69 billion);
Council Tax Rebate Scheme (£3.06 billion)
the Revenue Support Grant (£1.62 billion); and
other smaller grants (£0.95 billion).

Other grants schemes include Localising council tax new burdens, Fire pension, Redmond review, fees and charges support and lower tier services grants which are all administered by DLUHC.

Housing, communities and other

The housing and communities budget is used to fund the department’s programmes and, in the diagram, has been split by strategic priorities. The majority of this spend relates to our priority for a sustainable and resilient local government sector that delivers priority services and empowers communities(£9.37 billion), to raise productivity and empower places so everyone can benefit from levelling up (£1.95 billion), and more, better quality, safer, greener and more affordable homes (£1.48 billion). Other housing and communities spend (£1.16 billion) includes our strategic priorities ending rough sleeping (£0.67 billion); and our running costs (£0.48 billion).

Running costs include administration expenditure and expenditure related to movements in pension scheme liabilities and additions and impairments of capital assets used to run the department.

Annually managed expenditure (AME) budgets are shown separately in the Statement of Outturn against Parliamentary Supply but the diagram above includes AME budgets attributed to the strategic area that they relate to.

Further detail on the department’s budgets can be found in the Parliamentary Accountability and Audit Report.

Group Loans, Investments and Returns

In order to achieve its objectives more efficiently, the department has increasingly made investments or given loans instead of grants, sometimes from its own balance sheet and sometimes by guaranteeing loans made from other entities. All loans are due to be repaid in full with an appropriate rate of interest. However, as with any investment product, there is a risk of loss and provisions are recorded as required.

Equity loans under the Help to Buy scheme are provided for a period of 25 years, finance extended under the guarantee programmes have maturities of up to 30 years, and the majority of the department’s direct loans mature in less than 10 years.

DLUHC Financial Assets

£m	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22
Help to Buy	6,569	9,053	11,084	14,016	17,054	18,428
Other Fair Value Financial	10	11	970	1,103	982	1,151
Assets
Public Sector Loans	118	243	462	284	336	323
Private Sector Loans	628	836	868	819	1,504	1,398
Total financial assets	7,326	10,144	13,384	16,223	19,875	21,300

Group Financial Position

The department’s Statement of Financial Position as at 31 March 2022 shows the size of our asset base which is predominantly made up of the department’s investment in the Help to Buy scheme. The Governance Statement describes how the department manages the financial and credit risk of its portfolio of financial instruments.

Department’s Statement of Financial Position 31 March 2022

Assets	Amount (£m)	Description
Pensions	64	Audit Commission Pension Fund and ALB pension fund deficits.
Investments	60	Investments in associates and joint ventures.
Property, equipment and intangibles	135	Includes investment property, buildings, office equipment and computer software.
Trade and other receivables	969	Mainly comprised on payments due to be received from the European Commission and land asset receivables.
Inventory	1,512	Comprised of the value of land and property held by the department for development as well as payments made to projects under the ERDF programme yet to be certified.
Financial Assets at Amortised Cost	1,722	Mainly comprised of loans to fund housing developments.
Cash and cash equivalents	3,849	Cash held with the government banking service.
Fair Value Financial Assets	19,773	Mainly comprised of the value of government’s share of houses purchased under the Help to Buy scheme.
	Liabilities
Trade and other payables	-£6,687	The largest payables relate to deferred income - amounts received in advance from the EU.
Provisions	-£140	Liabilities reflecting payments to be made in the future that have some uncertainty attached to them.
Financial Guarantees	-£112	Valuation of housing guarantees based on government’s expected losses on defaults of the debt being guaranteed.
	Net Assets 21,144

Sustainability Report

DLUHC’s Property Function acts as an Intelligent Client Function to align the department’s estates strategy and plans for operational delivery through the Government Property Agency (GPA). Increasingly, DLUHC’s presence is based around the GPA’s Hub locations. GPA are responsible for FM supplier management, the introduction of improved best practice on asset condition and take the lead in setting and delivering estates related Net Zero and related sustainability standards. In the past year the Department has made a number of office moves into more modern and energy efficient buildings. For example, we opened a new second HQ in Wolverhampton, and new offices in Edinburgh and Cardiff (with a new office in Northern Ireland to open shortly). We have also moved into temporary premises in the Darlington Economic Campus, along with HMT and several OGDs. We also moved to a new GPA Hub in Birmingham and a new HMRC property in Leeds.

The Department is in the process of introducing Smarter Working which allows people to make the choices about their working patterns and includes a blend of home and office working. This will enable significant reductions in carbon consumption through reduced commuting and business travel. Next our Smarter Working investment plans will turn to the refurbishment of our London HQ.

Our Overall GGC performance

In 2021-22 the department saw a decrease in gas, electricity and water use from 2020-21. The department subscribes to a number of targets including the mandatory Greening Government Commitments (GGC) for reducing energy, water, paper and other resource use, reducing travel and managing waste. These targets were updated during 2021-22 with a new target period to 2025. The greenhouse gas emissions target for the department is a reduction of 47% in total emissions and 25% in direct emissions compared to a 2017-18 baseline.

In 2021-22, DLUHC met the GGC targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, reduction in overall waste production and water consumption but are yet to record meeting the waste to landfill or recycling targets.

The data below shows the department’s present position for the financial year 2021-22 against a 2017/18 baseline (unless otherwise stated). Environmental data is for a 12-month reporting period from January 2021 to December 2021. In accordance with annual reporting conventions across other UK Government departments, the Department’s non-financial indicators are complied using data from the final quarter of the previous reporting year plus the first three quarters of the current reporting year. 2020-21 non-financial indicators have been restated to include actual environmental performance for the 2020-21 financial year.

The GPA was responsible for managing the department’s property portfolio in 2021-22. However, overall responsibility for sustainability remains with the DLUHC executive team.

In order to report the greenhouse gas emissions associated with activities, ‘activity’ data such as distance travelled, litres of fuel used or tonnes of waste disposed has been converted into carbon emissions.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, attendance at offices during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years was lower than usual. This has impacted the result against target reductions in the following tables.

Overall GGC Performance

Requirement (from the 17/18 baseline unless otherwise stated)	2017-18 performance	2018-19 performance	2019-20 performance	2020-21 performance	2021-22 performance	Achievement against target
Reduce overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 47%	10,057	32%	34%	56%	63%	Emissions have reduced and the target is currently being met
Reduce direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25%	1,964	12%	8%	23%	36%	Emissions have reduced and the target is currently being met
Reduce the overall amount of waste generated by 25%	631	-35%	-39%	63%	63%	Waste has reduced and the target is currently being met
Reduce the amount of waste going to landfill to less than 5%	2%	5%	3%	5%	9%	The amount going to landfill has increased compared to the baseline. The target is yet to be met.
Increase the proportion of waste which is recycled to at least 70% of overall waste	54%	76%	68%	71%	57%	The amount of waste recycled has reduced compared to the baseline. The target is yet to be met.
Reduce water consumption by at least 8%	58,965	-17%	-21%	19%	26%	Water use has decreased and the target is currently being met

Greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators (tCO2e)
Total Gross Scope 1 (Direct) GHG emissions**	1,964	1,727	1,800	1,504	1,250
Total Gross Scope 2 (Energy indirect) emissions	6,407	3,514	3,265	2,365	1,883
Total Gross Scope 3 (Official business travel) emissions	1,686	1,621	1,597	517	593
Total emissions - Scope 1, 2 & 3	10,057	6,862	6,662	4,386	3,726
Non-financial indicators (MWh)
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Electricity: non-renewable 4,350	0	0	0	238
Electricity: renewable	13,874	12,413	12,773	10,144	8,609
Gas	6,639	8,014	8,468	8,088	6,861
Gas oil	1,677
Steam					29
Total energy	26,540	20,427	21,241	18,232	15,557
*Financial Indicators (£)**
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Electricity	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	626,434
Gas	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	78,602
Total Energy	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	705,036
Total expenditure on official business travel	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	536,638

*DLUHC are minor tenants in all the buildings occupied. Costs of energy are shared between all tenants. The financial indicators are an estimated apportionment based on information provided by facilities management providers

Waste minimisation and management

Waste production 2021-22

Waste	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators (tonnes)
Hazardous waste	-	-	-	-	-
Non-hazardous waste: Landfill	12	40	28	12	20
Non-hazardous waste: Reused/recycled	340	643	596	165	133
Non-hazardous waste: Composted	107	99	196	30	25
ICT waste: Reused	-	-	-	-	-
ICT waste: Recycled	-	-	-	-	-
Incinerated with energy from waste	172	67	55	27	56
Total waste	631	849	875	234	234
*Financial Indicators £**
Waste Management Services	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	128,660

Waste has been reduced by 63% since 2017-18, and 9% of waste is currently sent to landfill. Where data is not available on waste routes for a site a conservative approach has been taken to assume 100% goes to landfill. On sites where actual data or confirmation of waste routes is available to establish an estimate, the amount to landfill is 2.9%.

Paper

Paper Consumption	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators Reams	8,883	11,603	16,881	2,886	7,037

Consumer Single Use Plastics (CSUP)

CSUPs*		2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators	Number of items	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	55,655

*CSUPs are consumer single use plastics; data was not collated prior to 2021/22 and the data is for Q1-Q3 of procurement only

Finite Resource consumption 2021-22

Water

Water		2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators	Total water consumption (m3)	58,965	68,800	71,255	47,773	43,427
Financial Indicators* (£)	Water expenditure	-	-	-	-	8210

Business Travel

Domestic Flights

Domestic Flights		2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators	Emissions (Tonnes CO2eq)	29	42	49	0	4

International Flights

International Flights		2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22
Non-financial indicators	Emissions (Tonnes CO2eq)	N/A	N/A	N/A	5	1

Ultra-low emission vehicles

ULEVs**		2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21 restated	2021-22
Non-financial indicators	% of overall fleet	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	53

Future look – net zero

During the next year GPA will be rolling out a range of net zero interventions in properties that DLUHC occupy, including lighting in London Marsham Street and assessing further works at Nottingham Apex Court and Bristol Temple Quay House.

Other Sustainability Commitments

Sustainable Procurement

All Procurement staff are required to complete annual training and an assessment to demonstrate their understanding of the importance of ethical procurement and sustainable supply chain practices. Identified procurement champions undertake more advanced training and can provide more in-depth sustainability advice across the procurement life cycle.

Our internal procurement guidance and checklists support the application of all relevant sustainable procurement policies in our tenders. This includes Government Buying Standards (GBS), social value (PPN 06/02), modern slavery (PPN 05/19) and supplier carbon reduction plans (PPN 06/21).

Sustainability requirements have been enhanced in our model service terms and conditions, introducing additional sustainability requirements, for example supporting the Public Sector Equality Duty, in line with PPN 01/13 – Public sector equality duty, PPN 06/21 - carbon reduction, the Supplier Code of Conduct v.2 and the Government Buying Standards.

Reducing Environmental Impacts of ICT and Digital

All ICT procurements contain a section on green requirements, which incorporates a wide variety of information demonstrating supplier’s compliance with the department’s objectives of reducing carbon emissions and tackling climate change. In addition, technology driven steps to support our shift to smarter working, such as a switch to using MS Teams for our telephony services, reduces our overall power consumption, and save on telephony costs.

Procurement of Food and Catering

All food provided in our catering outlets is produced to UK or equivalent food standards and is local and in season, where possible. The department buys food from farming systems that minimise harm to the environment, such as produce certified by LEAF, the Soil Association or Marine Stewardship Council. The department also offers fairly traded and ethically sourced products.

Sustainable Construction

Government Property Agency (GPA), who manage DLUHC’s estate have published a Net Zero and Sustainability Annex to their design guide. This sets out the ambitions for both new buildings as well as major refurbishments they undertake on behalf of DLUHC. The guide includes consideration of carbon emissions from construction and operation as well as Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method targets.

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

The Group reported 33.5% of its total procurement spend was made to SMEs during the 2020-21 financial year. This figure includes both direct and indirect SME spend and the department looks to procure through methods that will support the involvement of SMEs and VCSE organisations where possible.

Biodiversity and Natural Environment

The department’s estate comprises mainly of buildings with little outside space and limited opportunity to enhance the natural environment. GPA is, however, actively exploring opportunities to undertake biodiversity actions within the office spaces occupied.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development remains integral to policy work in the department, notably in planning policy and economic growth activities. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) sets out the government’s view of what sustainable development means for the planning system.

Rural Proofing

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) rural proofing impact assessment is an integral part of the department’s approach to developing regulation.

Climate Change Adaptation

During 2021/22 GPA has undertaken a series of cross functional discussions on climate change adaptation and will be undertaking further assessment in the next few months in order to refine any further detailed action plans needed. We expect them to share their findings with us as the work progresses.

Other Required Reporting

The department is required to report against various other topics in its Annual Report and Accounts as per the requirements set out in PES (2022) 01:

Section 70 of the Charities Act 2006 sets out a power for Ministers to give financial assistance to charitable, benevolent or philanthropic institutions and requires that payments made under this power are reported. The table at Annex D sets out the financial assistance provided by the Secretary of State under this power for the year 2021-22, totalling £11.3 million (2020-21: £28.3 million).
One complaint against the department was accepted for investigation by the Parliamentary Ombudsman during the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022.
In 2021-22 the department processed 13,532 (2020-21 14,553) items of correspondence from members of the public that were answered by officials. Of these, 57% (2020-21 44%) of letters requiring a response were replied to within our target of twenty working days.

Jeremy Pocklington CB

15 July 2022

Accounting Officer

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Policy Area	Description	Amount in 2021-22
Homelessness & Rough Sleeping	Protect and Vaccinate	£28 million
Homelessness & Rough Sleeping	Homelessness Prevention Grant Top Up	£65 million
Homelessness & Rough Sleeping	Community Champions/Covid 19 Additional Relief Fund/Covid Enforcement and Compliance	£22 million
Covid Response	Reopening High Streets Safely	£32 million
Shielding	Covid Local Council Tax Support	£670 million
Local Government	Shielding Support	£102 million
Local Government	Covid 20-21 Tax Income Guarantee Scheme	£799 million
Local Government	Expanded Retail Discount	£5,827 million
Local Government	Covid-19 Expenditure Support	£1,550 million
Local Government	Covid-19 Additional Relief Fund	£1,500 million
Local Government	Sales, Fees and Charges	£208 million
	Total	£10,656 million

Cookies on GOV.UK

Overview

Delivering in a COVID-19 environment

Housing

Homelessness Prevention

Support to Local Government and Communities

Table of COVID-19 Spend

1. Raise productivity and empower places so everyone can benefit from levelling up

What we achieved in 2021-22

Reform

Levelling Up Investments

Pan-Regional Partnerships

Devolution Deals

Resilience and Recovery

Specific Challenges

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

2. More, better quality, safer, greener and more affordable homes

2A. Housing & Planning

What we achieved in 2021-22

Getting Britain building

Helping people onto the housing ladder

Leasehold

Reform the planning system

Better quality, accessible, homes

Social Housing

Domestic Abuse

Disabled Facilities Grant

Supported Housing

Specific Challenges

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

2B. Safer and Greener Buildings

What we achieved in 2021-22

Building Safety Reform

Remediation Delivery

Grenfell Tower

Support the Grenfell Community

Grenfell Inquiry

Net Zero

Specific Challenges

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

3. End rough sleeping through more effective prevention and crisis intervention services, and reduce homelessness by enabling local authorities to fully meet their statutory duties

What we achieved in 2021-22

Preventing Homelessness

Rough Sleeping Initiative

Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme

Rough Sleeping Drug and Alcohol Treatment Grant

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

4. A sustainable and resilient local government sector that delivers priority services and empowers communities

What we achieved in 2021-22

Funding for Local Government

Council Tax Rebate Scheme

Supporting Local Government Service Delivery and Improvement

Empowering local leaders

Local Government Oversight and Accountability

Building stronger communities and improving outcomes

Support for New Arrivals

Homes for Ukraine

Hong Kong British National Overseas

Afghan Resettlement

Integration and social cohesion

Faith, belief and places of worship

UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre

Specific Challenges

Homes for Ukraine

UK Holocaust Memorial & Learning Centre

Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals

5. Ensure the benefits of the Union are clear, visible and understood by all citizens; and reforming the constitution and sustaining our democracy

What we achieved in 2021-22

Strengthening the Union

Reforming the constitution and sustaining our democracy

6. Strategic Enablers

What we achieved in 2021-22

Workforce, skills and location

Innovation, technology and data

Delivery, evaluation and collaboration

Sustainability

EU Exit Transition

Housing

Local Government and Resilience

Building Safety