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Home Office

Answer

Mr. Andrew Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what budget was allocated to (a) the Connecting Communities Network, (b) the Civil Justice Council, (c) the Criminal Justice Integration Unit, (d) crime reduction partnerships, (e) each of the regional crime reduction teams, (f) the drug action teams, (g) the Criminal Records Bureau and (h) the Frank Drugs Campaign in each of the last two years; and how many staff each organisation employed in each year. [201725] Fiona Mactaggart: The information is as follows: (a) The Department does not recognise the term "Connecting Communities Network", but the budget for the Connecting Communities Grant programme was £4.695 million in the financial year 2003-04, rising to £5.908 million in 2004-05. The number of Home Office staff employed full-time on administering this grant was five in 2003-04, and one and a half in 2004-05. (b) The Civil Justice Council (CJC) is funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The CJC's budget was £205,000 in the financial year 2003-04, rising to £214,000 in 2004-05. The number of staff in post (full- time equivalents) at 31 March 2004 was 3.1 and at 30 November 2004 was 4.1 (excluding the administrative head of the CJC, as he has split responsibilities and is funded by the Master of the Rolls). (c) As the term "Criminal Justice Integration Unit" is unfamiliar, this question cannot be answered. (d) The Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRP), although having statutory functions, are not organisations in their own right and it is not possible to quantify the staff employed. CDRPs are "virtual" partnerships, reliant upon the individual partners for the quality and quantity of resource available to them. Their work is largely co-ordinated by staff employed by local authorities, supplemented by seconded, or dedicated, police officers and officers from other Responsible Authorities. (e) The budgets for, and number of staff employed by, the regional crime reduction teams at the 10 Government Office for the Regions is given in the following table. _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 2003-04 2004-05 Region Budget £000 Staff employed Budget £000 Staff employed NE 677 13.5 679 14 NW 997 20.5 999 21 Yorks and Humber 832 17.5 834 18 West Midlands 980 20 982 20.5 East Midlands 919 18.5 921 19 East Midlands 790 15.5 793 16 SE 815 16.5 817 17 SW 890 18.5 893 19 London 1,278 25.5 1,280 26 Wales 626 14.8 654 16.8 Total 8,804 180.8 8,852 187.3 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Note: With regard to Wales, the budget shown here includes the Crime Reduction Director's Salary, and the number of staff employed in 2004-05 includes one Business Crime Adviser. The Crime Reduction Teams in the Government Offices for the Regions include drugs teams, partnership advisors, youth crime workers and street crime workers, among others. Not all of the staff within the team have their costs covered by the Home Office. The Regional Coordination Unit in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has responsibility for the staffing of the Government Offices and the Welsh Assembly Government has responsibility for the Crime Reduction Team in Wales. The Home Office holds details only of the number of staff employed in the teams at the end of July 2004, which was then 448. (f) Drug Action Teams (DAT) were established in 1995 and are accountable to the Home Secretary. They are local partnerships charged with responsibility for delivering the National Drugs Strategy at a local level, with representatives from the local authority (education, social services, housing), health, police, probation, the prison service and the voluntary sector. The 149 DATs in England receive an allocation from the Partnership Support Grant to support delivery of the Drugs Strategy. The Partnership Support Grant was formed in 2004-05 from the merger of two previous funding streams, the Drug Action Team Development Grant and the Drug Action Team Communities Against Drugs Grant. The budget for each of the financial years 2003-04 and 2004-05 was £11.3 million. No information is held centrally about the number of staff employed by the 149 DATs. (g) The budget allocated to the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) in the financial year 2003-04 was £22.8 million, comprising £8 million from the Home Office, £7.4 million from the Department for Education and Skills and £7.4 million from the Department of Health. In that year the CRB employed 380 staff. The CRB's budget for 2004-05 is £8.1 million, comprising £2.7 million from the Home Office, £3.4 million from the Department for Education and Skills and £2 million from the Department of Health. (h) The Frank Review report published on 25 November 2004 states that in the first set up year (2003-04) a total of £3.743 million was spent on advertising media funded by the Home Office and Department of Health. The marketing and advertising budget for the financial year 2004-05 is £3 million, funded equally by the Home Office and the Department of Health. Frank is not an organisation so has no staff.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

201725; 430 c831-2W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Crime prevention Finance Criminal Records Bureau Civil Justice Council Operating costs Criminal Justice Integration Unit Connecting communities

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk