Corporate report

MHCLG Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021 to 2022

Published 15 July 2021

Secretary of State for MHCLG

The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick

Permanent Secretary

Jeremy Pocklington

Foreword from the Secretary of State and Permanent Secretary

The past year upended people’s lives, businesses and communities. We have been at the forefront of the government’s fight against COVID-19 at national and local level: supporting councils, businesses and communities; shielding the vulnerable; bringing rough sleepers off the streets; and promoting the vaccine roll-out.

We are incredibly grateful to all our people for their efforts, rising to professional and personal challenges during this time.

Our Outcome Delivery Plan outlines our priorities to support the nation to build back better and greener, spanning across some of the government’s top domestic priorities.

Now is the time for our focus to shift to helping the country recover and rebuild, with our mission to level up never being more critical. We are making the most significant changes to the way we support local economic growth across the United Kingdom in a decade: regenerating our cities, towns and high streets, establishing freeports, improving local transport links and investing in local culture, whilst giving communities a stronger voice to take over cherished local assets.

We are delighted that in summer 2021 we will also take the historic step of opening our second departmental headquarters in Wolverhampton. This, along with a new hub in the Northern Economic Campus in Darlington, and a UK-wide presence – will ensure that a greater diversity of thought is reflected in the development and delivery of government policy, and promote greater career opportunities outside of London.

We are the Ministry of Housing, and have a mission to build more homes, of all types and tenures, throughout the country. This is a matter of social justice and intergenerational fairness. It is also critical to sustaining and creating jobs. We will do so with both demand and supply measures to provide a coherent housing agenda.

This year, we will introduce landmark reforms to modernise the planning system, with more beautiful, high-quality homes with communities at their heart and a simpler, more certain, digitised system for the benefit of everyone, from consumers to small builders. We will create Generation Buy by helping more people achieve the dream of home ownership underpinned by a range of schemes, from the 95% Mortgage Guarantee to the new model of Shared Ownership which we must promote and explain effectively.

The harrowing lessons of the Grenfell tragedy will never be forgotten, and we are introducing the most significant building safety changes ever: a new world-class building safety regime and regulator.

The dedication and hard work of councils has shone through, as they’ve kept essential public services going against the odds. We will champion taxpayer value and good government in our essential work to ensure that the local government system is sustainable, resilient and delivers for citizens.

And finally, it is right we build on the incredible gains made in supporting rough sleepers during the pandemic, and our goal is clear: no one should have to sleep rough in this country. In the year ahead we will tackle the complex and multi-faceted causes behind rough sleeping from every angle.

The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP
Secretary of State for Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Jeremy Pocklington CB
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

A. Executive summary

Role of the Department

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) supports communities across the country to thrive, making them great places to live and work.

We are at the heart of the government’s agenda to level up all parts of the country, and the national and local response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Our work includes investing in local areas to drive growth and jobs, delivering the homes our country needs, supporting our community and faith groups, and overseeing the local government, planning and building safety systems.

We sponsor 11 arm’s length bodies and agencies, including Homes England and the Planning Inspectorate, to deliver for people on the ground. We directly control annual budgets of £8.8 billion in capital spend and £3.0 billion in resource spend. We have responsibility for local government’s core spending power, which this year is worth up to £51.3 billon.

Vision and mission

We will enable people and places to work and thrive, as the country recovers and rebuilds from COVID-19. Our role to level up and build back better has never been more critical.

Our aims over the coming year and Spending Review period are to:

• Level up all parts of the country to create more opportunities, better jobs and boost living standards.
• Deliver more, better quality and greener homes – including introducing the biggest building safety changes in a generation, building more affordable homes and creating Generation Buy.
• End rough sleeping; and reducing homelessness.
• Oversee a sustainable and resilient local government system that delivers the key services we all rely on.

This is an ambitious agenda and to deliver it we must be more agile, more innovative and better connected to the places we serve. That is why we are opening a second Head Office in Wolverhampton, a new Departmental hub in the Northern Economic Campus in Darlington, and establishing a UK-wide presence for the first time.

We will also change how we work with local authorities and other key stakeholders in places, and work more closely with our delivery partners to think about how we collectively deliver for people in communities across the country.

Our priority outcomes

This delivery plan sets out in detail how we will deliver our priority outcomes^{[footnote 1]}, how we will measure our success, and how we will ensure we continuously improve.

1. Raise productivity and empower places so that everyone across the country can benefit from levelling up (cross-cutting outcome with BEIS, DfE, DfT, DWP, DCMS, Defra and DIT as contributing departments)

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

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 (cross-cutting outcome with DfE, DHSC, DWP, HO and MoJ as contributing departments)

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

The department also supports the delivery of the following priority outcomes led by other government departments:

Priority Outcome Title	Lead Department
Reduce crime	Home Office
Drive economic growth through improving the skills pipeline, levelling up productivity and supporting people to work	Department for Education
Reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Address poverty through enabling progression into the workforce and increasing financial resilience	Department for Work and Pensions
Improve social care outcomes through an affordable, high-quality and sustainable adult social care system	Department of Health and Social Care
Maximise employment across the country to aid economic recovery following COVID-19	Department for Work and Pensions
Increase economic growth and productivity through improved digital connectivity	Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Improve the environment through cleaner air and water, minimised waste, and thriving plants and terrestrial and marine wildlife	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children and young people through high quality local services so that no one is left behind	Department for Education

Strategic enablers

To deliver our priority outcomes – and reinforce the ambitions of the Declaration on Government Reform – we will focus on 4 key enablers:

1. Workforce, Skills and Location
2. Innovation, Technology and Data
3. Delivery, Evaluation and Collaboration
4. Sustainability

B. Introduction

Context

The last 12 months have been an extraordinary time for the department, local government and people and communities across the country. MHCLG has played a critical role in the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: by taking unprecedented steps to protect thousands of rough sleepers; in shielding the most vulnerable in society, and introducing emergency support for people, places and businesses.

But we have also made significant progress in delivering the government’s agenda. We are modernising the planning system; making the largest ever investment in affordable housing; and pressing ahead with our mission to deliver the homes the country needs – seeing the highest level of housebuilding for over 30 years. We are now delivering multi-billion-pound investment, to level-up all parts of the United Kingdom.

Looking ahead to 2021-22, the department must:

• Support the nation to build back better, greener, and level up the whole of the United Kingdom.
• Seize the opportunities arising from our departure from the European Union – ensuring the successor to EU funding programmes: the new UK Shared Prosperity fund is aligned to wider HMG funding, and targeted at strengthening and levelling up all parts of the Union, including through freeports.
• Ensure the financial sustainability of local authorities, as they support communities to recover and address backlogs in local public services, and build the resilience to manage further outbreaks.
• Build on the success of our ground-breaking interventions to bring an end to rough sleeping.
• Support the housing market by creating Generation Buy and working towards a fairer and more effective rental market. Deliver systematic and radical programmes of building safety and leasehold reform to address the issues exposed by the Grenfell tragedy.
• Continue our programme of planning reform to make it quicker and simpler for local businesses and communities to adapt and deliver the step change in housing this country needs.
• Deliver our historically ambitious Beyond Whitehall plan, establishing a second HQ in Wolverhampton, a new Departmental hub in the Northern Economic Campus in Darlington, and a UK-wide presence.
• Continue to make MHCLG a great place to work, by investing in our exceptional people so they have the necessary skills to deliver our ambitious programme for the people we serve.

Governance and delivery agencies

The Departmental Board comprises of Ministers, Non-Executive Directors and the Executive Team. Each member’s attendance at Departmental Board meetings is noted in our Annual Report and Accounts. The Board’s role is to advise on and supervise five key areas: strategic clarity; commercial sense; talented people; results focus; and management information. The Board’s membership is presented below:

Our Ministers

• The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP: Secretary of State
• The Rt Hon Christopher Pincher MP: Minister of State for Housing
• Eddie Hughes MP: Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing
• Luke Hall MP: Minister of State for Regional Growth and Local Government
• Lord Stephen Greenhalgh: Minister of State for Building Safety, Fire and Communities

Our Executive Directors

• Jeremy Pocklington CB: Permanent Secretary and Accounting Officer
• Catherine Frances: Director General, Local Government, Strategy and Analysis
• Emran Mian: Director General, Places and Development
• Matt Thurstan: Director General, Chief Financial Officer
• Tracey Waltho: Director General, Housing and Planning
• Richard Goodman: Director General, Building Safety, Grenfell & Net Zero
• Lise-Anne Boissiere: Director, Strategy
• Simon Claydon: Director, People, Capability and Change
• Christian Cubitt: Director of Communications

Our Non-Executive Directors

• Michael Jary: Lead Non-Executive Director
• Dame Mary Ney DBE: Non-Executive Director
• Pam Chesters CBE: Non-Executive Director
• Dame Alison Nimmo DBE: Non-Executive Director
• Jeffrey Dodds: Non-Executive Director

The Non-Ministerial Board is chaired by the Lead Non-Executive Director. It is attended by the Executive Team and non-executive directors. Its role is to scrutinise organisational capability and culture.

The Audit and Risk Assurance Committee reviews assurances on governance, risk, internal control and integrity of accounting and reporting procedures, chaired by the lead NED.

Further details of Ministers’ areas of responsibility, the department’s Non-Executive Directors and the Executive Team can all be found on the MHCLG website.

Further details of the department’s governance, including our Arm’s-Length Bodies can be found in the MHCLG Accounting Officer System Statement.

Overview of strategic risk

The department faces a range of risks stemming from our diverse responsibilities for housing, local government, communities and growth, as well as our role as a central government department and employer.

The risks we face are varied in nature and severity and are sometimes determined by external events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or changes in the UK economy; or by external forces over which the department may have some influence but no control.

The department must ensure its budgets are allocated appropriately in order to meet its objectives and must act to ensure value for money and to deliver on its duty of care to staff and others, while mitigating these risks. They include people capacity and capability to deliver our objectives; organisational resilience to concurrent events; information, cyber security and IT infrastructure risks; and risks arising from financial exposure.

Our resources

Our finances

• Communities Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL): £11.8 billion
• Resource DEL (excluding depreciation and admin): £2.6 billion
• Capital DEL: £8.8 billion
• Annually Managed Expenditure (AME): £15.2 billion
• Local Government Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL): £17.5 billion

Source: Main Supply Estimates 2021-22

Our people

As at 31 December 2020, the core department had 2,320 full-time equivalent employees directly engaged on the department’s payroll.

Source: ONS public sector employment data / Release schedule: quarterly.

Breakdown of resource by work

In this environment, the importance of our work has never been greater. We need to have the resources to do our work effectively and respond to new priorities as they arise. Figure 1 shows how our resources are allocated to our different priority outcomes (excluding admin and depreciation).

Figure 1

Priority Outcome	Budget Communities RDEL (£bn)	Budget Communities CDEL (£bn)	Workforce (FTE)
Raise productivity and empower places so that everyone across the country can benefit from levelling up	0.5	1.3	772 FTE
More, better quality, safer, greener and more affordable homes	1.3	7.4	1,151 FTE
End rough sleeping through more effective prevention and crisis intervention services, and reduce homelessness by enabling local authorities to fully meet their statutory duties	0.7	0.1	141 FTE
A sustainable and resilient local government sector that delivers priority services and empowers communities	0.2	0.0	397 FTE
Corporate enablers	0.0	0.0	471 FTE

C. Priority outcomes delivery plans

1. Raise productivity and empower places so that everyone across the country can benefit from levelling up

Cross-cutting outcome with BEIS, DfE, DfT, DWP.

Lead Minister

Luke Hall MP, Minister of State for Regional Growth and Local Government

Senior Sponsor

Emran Mian, Director-General, Stronger Places

Outcome strategy

As the United Kingdom recovers and rebuilds from the COVID-19 pandemic, the department has a critical role in making the government’s mission to level up a reality. That is why we are making the most significant changes to the way we support local economic growth in a decade now. We will continue to invest in places and local communities right across the country: regenerating our town centres and high streets, supporting individuals into employment, improving local transport links and investing in local culture – while also giving communities a strong voice to take over cherished local assets.

At the Budget, the government confirmed the next stage of this agenda, including additional funding for skills and job support, 8 Freeports that will be national hubs for trade, innovation and commerce, regenerating communities across the country, and the launch of the first round of the £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund, to invest in local infrastructure that has a visible impact on people and their communities and support economic recovery. This builds upon our ambitious programme of Town Deals, with 53 announced to date and more planned to support the long-term economic and social regeneration, and recovery from COVID-19.

To be better connected to the places we serve, we are opening a second Head Office in Wolverhampton, a new Departmental hub in the Northern Economic Campus in Darlington, and establishing a UK-wide presence for the first time.

We will empower people and places through further devolution, building on the successful devolution of powers to city region mayors and others, so that every part of the country has the power to shape its own destiny. Finally, we will continue to build community resilience to respond to, and recover from, emergencies such as COVID-19.

Departments contributing

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy jointly sponsors the Cities and Local Growth Unit and is responsible for support and access to finance for local business start-up and growth; place-based science, R&D, and innovation; decarbonisation of local economies; and supporting industrial centres of excellence and local comparative advantage.

Department for Education is responsible for developing a skills system that gives businesses a key role in shaping skills provision locally and increased access to higher technical STEM provision that meets the skills needs of local economies.

Department for Transport is responsible for investment in local transport to enable high levels of transport connectivity within functional economic areas and city regions, supporting labour markets and the effective operation of supply chains. Responsible for investment in urban transport to address productivity gaps between London and other major city regions. Responsible for improving cycle routes and bus networks in local areas.

Department for Work and Pensions is responsible for the delivery of the Plan for Jobs; providing skills, training and employment support.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is responsible for delivering better broadband and mobile phone coverage to boost productivity in all sectors and support high growth sectors like tech and the creative industries. The department’s investment in culture, sport and civil society, as well as its stewardship of major events such as the Platinum Jubilee, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games and Festival UK 2022 will empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, enhancing the cohesiveness of communities across the UK.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is responsible for working with departments to ensure the needs of rural communities are taken into account across policy development and delivery, as well as utilising the opportunities through further devolution to strengthen local leadership on the environment to support the delivery of government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.

Department for International Trade is responsible for ensuring the Exports Strategy and Investment Strategy is cognisant of the needs of different places and local businesses and ensuring alignment of local and pan regional body strategies with HMG’s international trade agenda.

Our performance metrics

Metric

Description

Economic performance of all functional economic areas relative to their trend growth rates

The metric captures the difference between actual gross value added (GVA) per hour worked compared to a trend forecast calculated from previous performance and forecasts for productivity from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Source: Subregional productivity: labour productivity indices by local authority district, Table A3 / Release schedule: Annually Economy wide labour productivity projections are in the OBR report, page 49, table 2.2 Source: Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) Fiscal sustainability report / Release schedule: Annually

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
Raise productivity and empower places so that everyone across the country can benefit from levelling up	Supports SDG 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
	Supports SDG 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries.
	Supports SDG 11 - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Projects and programmes

How we will achieve this:

• Support high streets to reopen through a £56 million Welcome Back Fund and £50 million Reopening High Streets Safely Fund and provide advice for high streets and town centres to adapt and thrive through the High Streets Taskforce.
• Invest in places right across the country, including through the £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund; £220 million on the UK Community Renewal Fund, and £150 million through the Community Ownership Fund.
• Launch the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) in 2022 which will help to level up and create opportunity across the UK in places most in need.
• Establish 8 new freeports across the UK to power regeneration, job creation and entrepreneurship.
• Deliver the West Yorkshire devolution deal.
• Invest in local areas, including through the £1 billion allocated from the Towns Fund at Budget 2021, and the £900 million Getting Building Fund to kick start innovative regeneration projects and give areas a boost.
• Drive economic growth through our pan-regional partnerships in the Northern Powerhouse, Midlands England, Thames Estuary and Western Gateway; and ensuring we are better connected to the places we serve, including through setting up a new HQ in Wolverhampton.
• Strengthen the valuable link between the central and local tiers of government, to ensure they are prepared and resilient to respond to and recover from incidents and emergencies such as COVID-19.

Outcome evaluation plan

The department is in the process of developing detailed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plans for each local growth fund:

• Towns and Future High Streets Fund monitoring and evaluation strategy will be published in the spring.
• Coastal Communities Fund final report to be published in summer 2021.
• Levelling up Fund and Freeports Fund M&E framework is currently being developed.
• Work is starting on the design of the Local Growth Fund (in partnership with BEIS), UKSPF and UK Levelling-Up Fund evaluations. The evaluation process is being designed alongside the policy over the coming months.
• The England European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) programme has been focussed on supporting the creation of jobs and growth. The interim programme impact evaluation to be published this year will set out progress to date and will help inform the development of domestic successor arrangements.

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

Lead Ministers:

The Rt Hon Chris Pincher, Minister of State for Housing
Lord Stephen Greenhalgh, Minister of State for Building Safety and Communities

Senior Sponsors:

Tracey Waltho, Director-General, Housing and Planning
Richard Goodman, Director-General, Building Safety and Net-Zero

Outcome strategy

We are committed to ensuring the housing market delivers the homes people need; supporting the levelling up of opportunity, job creation and economic growth; whilst striving towards our world-leading net zero target for 2050, decarbonising the existing housing stock and setting standards for future homes.

Our aim is to build at least a million new homes by the end of this Parliament. We will achieve this through: our National Home Building Fund; increasing housing supply and unlocking land for homes through investing in the provision of infrastructure; protecting the market against the impacts of the pandemic; reforming the planning system to deliver high-quality, sustainable homes, whilst continuing to protect our green spaces; and diversifying the housebuilding industry, backing smaller builders and supporting innovative methods of construction.

We will create Generation Buy by helping more people achieve the dream of home ownership through the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme, Help to Buy and First Homes. We will make the largest ever investment in social housing through our £12 billion Affordable Homes Programme, and deliver on our commitments in the Charter for Social Housing Residents to give social sector tenants a stronger voice and a better service from their landlords. We will take the first legislative step in our leasehold reform agenda and set out in the autumn our reform package for a better deal for renters.

And we will deliver the biggest changes in building safety for a generation, creating a new regulator and implementing the comprehensive plan to remove unsafe cladding from buildings.

Our performance metrics

Metric	Description
Net additions to housing stock	Estimates of annual change in the size of the dwelling stock in England due to new house building completions, conversions, changes of use, demolitions and other changes to the dwelling stock. Source: Live table on housing supply: net additional dwellings statistics / Release schedule: Annual
Number and % of high-rise residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding where remediation completed	Comprehensive data update on progress with ACM cladding remediation. Source: Building Safety Programme monthly data release – March 2021 / Release schedule: Monthly
Total completions of affordable homes	Total number of new affordable homes provided in England, broken down by type of scheme. Source: Live tables on affordable housing supply / Release schedule: Annual
Number of Energy Performance Certificates created	Information about certificates on the energy efficiency of domestic and non-domestic buildings in England and Wales that have been constructed, sold, or let since 2008, and of larger public authority buildings since 2008. We also publish open data on EPCs which is searchable in bulk or by address: EPC Open Data Communities Source: Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates / Release schedule: Quarterly
Number and % of planning applications considered within statutory deadlines	Information on planning applications received and decided. Source: Live tables on planning applications statistics / Release schedule: Quarterly
Additional housing completions from government programmes
Share of supported housing completions using Modern Methods of Construction
% of local authorities with an up-to-date Local Plan

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
More, better quality, safer, greener and more affordable homes	Supports SDG 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
	Supports SDG 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
	Supports SDG 13 – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

Projects and programmes

How we will achieve this:

Getting Britain building

• Set out a detailed vision of what the country’s housing and land markets should be like by 2030, and see 1 million new homes built over this Parliament.
• Continue the transformation of Homes England.
• Open up the housing market to diverse providers, including smaller builders and those who embrace innovative and efficient methods of construction.
• Tackle infrastructure barriers and unlock land for housing, enabling the delivery of thousands of new homes and supporting the creation of jobs and growth.
• Deliver transformative housing and economic growth opportunities, including through a new generation of Development Corporations and the OxCam Arc.

Helping people on the housing ladder

• Help more people achieve the dream of home ownership, including through the new Help to Buy scheme (runs from April 2021 to March 2023) and supporting local first-time buyers and key workers through the First Homes scheme.
• Reform and implement a new model for Shared Ownership, delivering on the government’s manifesto commitment to introduce a fairer and more transparent model.
• Deliver hundreds of thousands of affordable homes through the Affordable Homes Programmes, ensuring homes are of good quality and meet climate change commitments.
• Transform leasehold law and the experience of leaseholders with legislation in this Parliament, including introducing the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill in May 2021 to end the financial demand for ground rents in new residential long leases.

Reform the planning system

• Introduce landmark reforms to speed up and modernise the planning system, get the country building, and build beautiful homes with communities at their heart.
• Develop high quality design codes to be used across the country – with a design body funded and operating to promote design quality in the built environment.

Better quality, accessible, homes

• Improve the quality and experience of current and future housing stock, by continuing to deliver on the social housing white paper proposals, including implementing the charter for social housing residents. We will also continue to develop reform of social housing regulations, and publishing a white paper on reforms to the private rented sector.
• Providing safe accommodation with support for all victims of domestic abuse, including children.
• Improving the quality and value for money of supported housing.

Reform the building safety system

• Implement a comprehensive plan to remove unsafe cladding, including through commencing delivery of £3.5 billion of grant funding additional to the £1.6 billion already provided to protect leaseholders from these costs; and introducing a levy on developers to right the wrongs of the past.
• Reform the regulatory regime for building safety and construction products, through the delivery of a Building Safety Act that brings in a new more stringent regime for high rise residential buildings and establishes the Building Safety Regulator and the National Regulator for Construction Products.
• We have launched an Independent Review of the system for testing construction products to examine systemic weaknesses and recommend how the system can be strengthened to inspire confidence that construction products are safe and perform as described and marketed.

Support the Grenfell community

• Ensure that the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has the full support to deliver justice.
• Manage the Grenfell Tower Site safely and securely, including delivering a fitting memorial for the bereaved, survivors and Grenfell community.
• Continue to support the recovery of those affected by the Grenfell Tower fire.

Net-Zero

• Strive towards our world-leading net zero target for 2050 and COP26, including delivering the Future Homes Standard from 2025, implementing an interim uplift in 2021 as a stepping stone towards the full standard, and working with BEIS to deliver the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Action Plan.

Outcome evaluation plan

A full set of monitoring and evaluation priorities and past activity for housing and planning is set out in the department’s Housing monitoring and evaluation strategy. For example, we recently published comprehensive scoping studies for the process and impact evaluation plans for the Housing Infrastructure Fund. Homes England also has a comprehensive plan of evaluation activity for key programmes.

The Building Safety Bill will ensure that the building safety legislation and the effectiveness of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) will be subject to regular independent review. In addition, the Department has effective arrangements in place to monitor progress on the work to set up the BSR, overseen by the BSR Transition Board. Longer term, we expect that the BSR’s key performance indicators will be set out in the statutory, published Strategic Plan.

We will evaluate how our existing remediation funding programmes have worked prior to implementing the additional £3.5 billion non-ACM Building Safety Fund announced earlier this year.

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

Cross-cutting outcome with DHSC, MoJ, HO, DWP and DfE.

Lead Minister:

Eddie Hughes MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing and Rough Sleeping

Senior Sponsor:

Tracey Waltho, Director-General, Housing and Planning

Outcome strategy

Working closely with other departments we will end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament, building on the significant progress made during the pandemic to support the most vulnerable in society.

Building on more than £700 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping in 2020-21, we will invest over £750 million more this year. We will invest more to prevent homelessness, supporting local authorities through the Homelessness Prevention Grant. We’ll expand the flagship Rough Sleeping Initiative to continue to drive reductions in rough sleeping in local areas, enabling local partners to support those in need off the streets.

We’ll fund new homes with additional support through the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme, to offer safe accommodation and tailored help to support people to recover. We will continue to work with partners across central and local government and in the voluntary sector to tackle the drivers of rough sleeping, including addiction, mental health, offending, so we can end rough sleeping for good.

Departments contributing

The Department of Health and Social Care are supporting this priority outcome by working to protect and improve health outcomes, and reduce health inequalities, for people at risk of and experiencing rough sleeping by expanded and improved mental health support, improved access to substance misuse services and measures to support individuals experiencing rough sleeping with physical health needs.

The Ministry of Justice are supporting this priority outcome by working to reduce the number of offenders who are released from prison homeless by appointing dedicated staff in prisons to help them to get quicker access to accommodation, healthcare and employment support services as they are released; supporting prison leavers at risk of homelessness into temporary basic accommodation (initially in 5 of the 12 probation regions) for up to 12 weeks, giving them the foundation for a crime-free life; expanding the Approved Premises estate to meet increased demand; and proactively supporting better reoffending outcomes by focusing on areas where there are high levels of needs that have a significant impact on reoffending outcomes, such as mental health, substance misuse and adult social care.

The Home Office are supporting this priority outcome with responsibility for considering law enforcement’s role in tackling rough sleeping and sharing best practice; and supporting a reduction in non-UK nationals sleeping rough, including failed asylum seekers.

The Department for Work and Pensions are supporting this priority outcome by working with MHCLG to understand the role of welfare support and Discretionary Housing Payments to minimise the risk of homelessness or rough sleeping and developing proposals to strengthen employment support offers.

The Department for Education are supporting this priority outcome by targeting young people leaving local authority care, who are significantly more at risk of sleeping rough than the general population. This will focus on continued implementation of Staying Put, a statutory duty placed on local authorities that enables young people to stay with foster carers until 21, rolling out Staying Close, support for young people leaving residential care up to 21, and continued funding for specialist personal advisors in local authorities with high levels of care leavers at risk of rough sleeping.

Our performance metrics

Metric	Description
Number of people sleeping rough in England in the annual rough sleeping snapshot	The annual presentation of the number of individuals sleeping rough on a single night in November, using a combination of in-person counts and estimates. Source: Rough Sleeping Snapshot in England / Release schedule: Quarterly
Number of families in temporary accommodation in England	Total number of households in temporary accommodation with children. Based on the information held by LA Housing teams this is a measure of the number of households with dependent children currently housed in temporary accommodation. Source: Statutory homelessness in England: October to December 2020 / Release schedule: Quarterly
Number of units delivered through the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
End rough sleeping through more effective prevention and crisis intervention services, and reduce homelessness by enabling local authorities to fully meet their statutory duties	Supports SDG1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
	Supports SDG3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
	Supports SDG10 – Reduce inequality within and among countries.
	Supports SDG11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Projects and programmes

How we will achieve this:

• Implementing the legislative change in the Domestic Abuse Act to include people who are homeless as a result of domestic abuse as a priority need category.
• Implement the findings of the Homelessness Reduction Act Review.
• £310 million Homelessness Prevention grant to local authorities.
• £203 million Rough Sleeping Initiative funding delivered to local authorities.
• Move on accommodation funded through the Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme.
• £52 million of funding to deliver additional substance misuse services in at least 43 local areas.
• Support to the most vulnerable through our sub-regional Housing First pilots.
• £20 million of funding delivered by the MoJ to support prison leavers at risk of homelessness on release into temporary basic accommodation for up to 12 weeks in five National Probation Service regions.

Outcome evaluation plan

The official rough sleeping snapshot statistics will measure levels of rough sleeping on a single night, providing an annual measure of change in the level of rough sleeping, with a time series dating back to 2010.

Evaluations are already in place for the Next Steps Accommodation and Housing First programmes. Discussions are also underway on an evaluation of drug and alcohol treatment services for rough sleepers. Departmental analysts are also doing research on the drivers of change in RSI areas to explore what factors have led to a reduction in rough sleeping.

We are currently scoping out research to evaluate the impact of different types of homelessness prevention activities.

We are also working on a project with ONS to understand the interactions between homelessness and other public services. The Homelessness Data England project was launched in the autumn 2020 and is ongoing. This project aims to provide a better understanding of the factors associated with homelessness and will facilitate the linking of H-CLIC data to data from other government departments. A pilot phase is already underway.

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

Lead Minister

Luke Hall MP, Minister of State for Regional Growth and Local Government

Senior Sponsor:

Catherine Frances, Director-General, Local Government, Strategy and Analysis

Outcome strategy

Local government is at the heart of delivering government’s objectives. Over the past year, it has played a crucial role on the front line in our response to COVID-19, whilst keeping priority services running for people in communities across the country.

In the year ahead we will continue to work with the local government system to ensure it delivers for us all. We will deliver a sustainable funding settlement beyond 2021-22 and develop better approaches to improving long term outcomes for people and places, through greater accountability and transparency, and more effective support for reform to help the sector face future challenges.

Finally, we will continue to work with the local government sector to test innovative approaches and seek to drive lasting change, not least to improve outcomes for families and adults experiencing multiple disadvantage.

Our performance metrics

Associated metrics for this priority outcome will be developed through the next Spending Review as necessary.

How our work contributes to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

Priority Outcome	Link to SDGs
A sustainable and resilient local government sector that delivers priority services and empowers communities	Supports SDG1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
	Supports SDG3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
	Supports SDG7 – Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
	Supports SDG8 – Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
	Supports SDG9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive & sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.
	Supports SDG 10 – Reduce inequality within and among countries.
	Supports SDG 11 – Makes cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
	Supports SDG13 – take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
	Supports SDG 16 – Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Projects and programmes

How we will achieve this:

• Continue to support councils and communities to implement the COVID-19 Roadmap to Recovery through clear guidance, and support for compliance and enforcement activity
• Continue to support local authorities with the financial consequences of COVID-19, including implementing the £3 billion of support announced at SR20; extending the sales, fees, and charges compensation scheme to June 2021; and continuing our regular financial monitoring.
• Deliver a financial settlement through the upcoming Spending Review and the Local Government Finance Settlement 2022-23, which enables financial sustainability and provides value for the taxpayer.
• Develop an enhanced approach to supporting local government improvement by considering key delivery outcomes for the sector, its capacity and capability to meet these and future outcomes, and alignment of democratic institutions.
• Delivering the Shared Outcomes Fund Place Model Project in partnership with several other central departments - working in 10-15 specific places to scrutinise how government currently works there, and develop an evidence base to support a new central-local dynamic which drives more effective spending and policymaking decisions across Whitehall.
• Supporting Liverpool City Council to give confidence to those who want to invest in the city to contract with the council, and to do business in Liverpool.
• Progress work on local government oversight and ensuring effective accountability of local government for stewardship of public funds. This will include responding to recommendations on external audit and support to ensure local authorities can function effectively and continue to improve.
• Lead for government on faith, belief and places of worship – celebrating the valuable contribution made by our faith communities and their buildings; administering MHCLG’s National Funding Portfolio to deliver faith policy work through our trusted partners; and sponsor department for the PM’s Independent Adviser on Faith Engagement, Colin Bloom.
• Improve services and outcomes for families and individuals with multiple disadvantages – by delivering a refreshed Supporting Families Programme, and a Changing Futures programme for individuals with multiple complex needs.
• Delivering interventions to build stronger communities and improve outcomes for all – including our COVID-19 Community Champions scheme; our work to celebrate the Windrush Generation’s contribution to British society; and leadership of government’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Strategy.
• Coordinate work across government to support Hong Kong BN(O) status arrivals to settle into their new lives and communities in the UK – including leadership of the HK-UK Welcome Package for new arrivals.
• Deliver the £150 million Community Ownership Fund, supporting communities to protect valuable local assets at risk by taking them into community ownership.
• Create a Cyber Health Framework for local government. This will establish a clear set of cyber standards, and provide support for councils to plan investments and know if they are meeting a national baseline of cyber security.
• Lead for government on integration, social cohesion and hate crime – including our Integration Area Programme and English Language for Integration Fund; joint-leadership, with Home Office, of government’s Hate Crime Strategy; and sponsor department for the PM’s Independent Adviser on Social Cohesion, Sara Khan.
• Begin construction of the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre at Victoria Tower Gardens.

Outcome evaluation plan

• Sustainable finance: MHCLG carefully monitors the ongoing financial position of the local government sector, to understand its position at a point in time, and to identify trends. This includes data from a range of sources, including the Local Authority Revenue Outturn Data (published annually), and ongoing engagement with local authorities and sector bodies. We are planning to continue our monitoring of the financial impact of COVID-19 on the sector.
• Supporting Families: Future research and evaluation will focus on what is most effective for families with different needs. This includes new research on effective practice and service delivery and a full review of existing evidence. Local area performance is monitored through successful family outcome claims, which are also used for payment by results funding.
• Community Ownership Fund: The prospectus will be published by the end of June 2021, containing details of how the impact of the Fund will be monitored and evaluated.
• Shared Outcomes Fund Place Model Project: we will evaluate the project to understand how better central government co-ordination impacts on the effectiveness of decision-making and delivery. A full set of objectives for the scheme, with indicators of how we will measure against these, will be agreed by project partners. These will be monitored throughout the project.
• Gypsy Roma Traveller Strategy: We will evaluate the impact of the cross-government Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Strategy to assess the efficacy of our interventions on raising outcomes and tackling inequalities.
• Resilience: we are developing a robust outcomes and evaluation framework for all of the Resilience and Recovery Directorate’s work. This will include evaluating the Local Resilience Forum Funding pilots, including how the money is spent, and the effect that it has on the work of local resilience structures and local resilience.
• Accountability: We keep the Local Government Accountability Framework under review and work closely with the sector through the Local Authority Governance and Accountability Framework Review Panel, to ensure the Framework is robust.

D. Strategic enablers

Workforce, skills and location

This plan represents a stepping-stone to achieving an ambitious agenda for this Parliament, as we move to deliver in places across the whole of the UK. To do this we will ensure we have skilled, diverse and high-performing people, who are proud to work for MHCLG, and are supported and trusted by empowering and inclusive leaders.

To deliver existing and new programmes of work; we will continue to grow the department and recruit people with the capabilities we need. As the work of the department has evolved significantly over the last 24 months, we are developing a capability plan, and investing in developing our people’s skills to deliver our outcomes. This will complement our talent development work which will be focused on increasing the diversity and location of our talent pipeline.

As we maintain our inclusive culture, we are further changing the way we work so we are more agile and better connected to the places we serve. Our historically ambitious Beyond Whitehall work includes the establishment of our new HQ in Wolverhampton, and establishing a presence at the Northern Economic Campus in Darlington.

To achieve this, we will:

• Develop a costed capability plan to bring in the skills we need to deliver as well as develop the skills of existing MHCLG colleagues. This will complement our talent development work, which will be focused on increasing the diversity and location of our talent pipeline.
• Continue our Beyond Whitehall work, which includes the establishment of our new second HQ in Wolverhampton and a presence in the Devolved Nations. Moving at least 500 roles out of London at an average of at least 100 per year by 2025 and 800 roles by 2030; including a commitment for 50% of our Senior Civil Servants to be based outside of London by 2030.
• As we recruit:
  • increase the diversity of colleagues at all grades, removing barriers to recruitment, development and promotion of a diverse workforce
  • reduce the time it takes to bring people into the department by at least 10% in the next year
  • develop a plan to reduce our turnover rate by reducing it to between 15-20%
• Continue to increase our engagement score of 67% as well as the leading and managing change scores of 64% in the annual People Survey.
• Reinforce the systems for talent management and performance management to address the personal and professional development needs and reward performance in line with government and departmental priorities.

People Survey Engagement Score

Year	Engagement score
2020	67%
2019	65%
2018	66%

Source: Civil Service People Survey / Release schedule: annually

Representation of female staff, ethnic minority staff and disabled staff

Year	Total Number of Staff	Female	Ethnic minority	Disabled
2020	2,274	51%	21%	12%
2019	2,133	52%	20%	9%
2018	1,718	51%	19%	9%

Source: Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Dashboard / Release schedule: quarterly

Innovation, technology and data

MHCLG’s digital and data strategies are focussed around 4 objectives.

Firstly, to ensure our underlying technology and infrastructure is modern, reliable, secure and user-focused.

Second, to modernise MHCLG’s internal and external digital services so they are compliant with the GDS service standard and tech code of practice and deliver efficiency and a better experience for users.

Third, to help MHCLG make and deliver policy fit for the internet age, for example on planning reform and local government.

And lastly, to improve the department’s digital awareness and capability, especially by introducing new ways of working across the department.

To achieve this, we will:

• Maintain and refresh hardware and infrastructure for MHCLG users, ensuring they have the tools to do their jobs.
• Cyber policies in place and our technology estate maintained to minimise vulnerabilities, prevent attacks, and enable rapid recovery if one occurs.
• Maintain and develop existing digital services.
• Create efficient, automated, user-centred internal corporate services.
• Bring digital reforms to the planning system, as part of the department’s wider planning reform agenda.
• Support local government in tackling cyber threats and modernising digital services.
• Develop our data infrastructure automating processes, making data more accessible, improving our meta data and accessing and linking data from other government departments.
• Apply modern advanced analytical tools and techniques consistently across all policy areas.
• Increase data capability throughout the department through identifying the data skills required, taking account of this in recruitment decisions and supporting our people to acquire them.

Delivery, evaluation and collaboration

We will continue to embed a culture of better outcomes, supporting the Accounting Officer to meet his duties, and to ensure successful delivery across our programmes. The production and maintenance of a departmental plan and portfolio structure provides clarity over what the department is trying to achieve, and how, and provides a yardstick to measure performance.

Functions support the development of programmes. For example: our business partners help maximise value for money and the chances of successful delivery, in close collaboration with our policy areas; the Investment Sub-Committee brings together functional heads to support and scrutinise new programmes; our Analysis and Data Directorate brings together facts, research and evidence to underpin decision-making; and our performance reporting, our governance of ALBs and internal audit assessments provide insight and checks that our activities are being delivered in line with expectations and best practice.

To achieve this, we will:

• Develop departmental policies and programmes that deliver with economy, effectiveness and efficiency.
• Allocate and control spending to remain within budgets and achieve objectives with economy, effectiveness and efficiency.
• Ensure effective monthly and other reporting to portfolio boards, our Executive Team, Ministers and the centre of government, as well as the preparation of the annual report and accounts.
• Control new programmes through Portfolio Boards, Investment Sub-Committee, Accounting Officer advice etc.
• Support major programme delivery, through the development of capability and standardisation of procedures.
• Oversee the department’s risk management and control of principal risks.
• Ensure we have process and impact evaluations in place for our most important policies and programmes and that learning from these informs future policy choices.
• Ensure internal audit reports provide assurance to the Accounting Officer and drive improvements in the control environment;
• Recruit and support non-executive directors and other public appointees.
• Provide assurance that ALBs are well run and acting in line with their mandate.
• Strengthen functional expertise and delivery, ensuring adherence to functional standards and effective monitoring of performance.
• Manage the planning cycle in such a way that it engages all staff in delivering priorities, through a well understood, efficient and transparent process.
• Provide transparent accountability through regular reporting, within the department, to the centre and Parliament.

Sustainability

MHCLG’s 2019-20 performance showed it was on track to deliver its Government Greening Commitments.

MHCLG was one of the early departments to on-board to the Government Property Agency (GPA) – helping us create great places to work for civil servants. Our future estates plans are driven by our Beyond Whitehall ambitions – growing our out of London presence, with new hubs in GPA run buildings in West Midlands and Darlington. As the government’s property experts, the GPA are well positioned to help deliver further estates-based improvements in sustainability for MHCLG, including helping us achieve our carbon targets.

Building on remote working over the last year, our hybrid working approach is designed to make full use of technology so that the need for staff to travel for work will be mitigated.

To achieve this, we will:

• Ensure that we are able to meet our greening government commitments and continue to monitor and track their delivery.
• Continue to ensure that our estate, activities and policies are sustainable and support climate change, resilience and adaptation.
• Continue to work with GPA to improve the sustainability of our estates, and align activity to their net zero programme.
• Roll-out meeting room technology to our existing offices to support effective hybrid working (our new office designs will include this as standard).

Greenhouse Gas emissions

Year	Total emissions (tonnes CO2)
2020	6,692
2019	6,862
2018	8,341

Source: Greening Government Commitments annual reports / Release schedule: annually

E. Our equality objectives

We have set objectives to help us advance equality. These are:

1. Help vulnerable people by reducing homelessness and ending rough sleeping, ensuring those eligible receive quality support regardless of protected characteristics.

2. Build integrated communities that create opportunities for everyone; begin construction of the UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.

3. Invest in places and communities across the United Kingdom that will help to reduce inequalities between communities, and monitoring who benefits from local growth and other interventions in furtherance of levelling up objectives.

4. Encourage diverse perspectives being agile and innovative, weaving and embedding diversity into our policymaking, positively impacting our citizens at their points of need.

5. Deliver the Inclusion Strategy to further enable a working environment that values difference, fosters an inclusive workplace culture where MHCLG employees from all backgrounds can give their best, are treated fairly, are valued for their contributions, and can progress their careers.

6. Through our Beyond Whitehall ambitions, diversify the places where our employees live, work and make decisions.

7. Improve our diversity data collection and increase our declaration rates – using evidence to inform our actions.

1. Provisional priority outcomes and associated metrics will be adjusted through the next Spending Review as necessary, including to deliver the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. ↩