I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 31737 on 27 February 2025.

The Government recognises that homelessness levels are far too high and this can have a devastating impact on those affected, including young people. We will look at these issues carefully and will consider youth homelessness as we develop our long-term, cross-government strategy working with Mayors and councils across the country, to get us back on track to ending homelessness.

The Homelessness Prevention Grant is allocated to councils across England based on local homelessness pressures and is used to meet local needs. Wolverhampton will receive £1,892,940.00 for 2025-26 through the Homelessness Prevention Grant.

Temporary accommodation must be suitable in relation to the applicant and to all members of their household who normally reside with them, or who might reasonably be expected to reside with them. Applicants may ask for a review on request of the housing authority’s decision that the accommodation offered to them is suitable.

The £1.2 billion Local Authority Housing Fund will provide capital funding directly to English councils and is expected to provide up to 7,000 homes by 2026. It will create a lasting asset for UK nationals by building a sustainable stock of affordable housing for local communities. The Local Authority Housing Fund will ease local homelessness pressures, reduce spending on unsuitable B&B accommodation, and provide safe and sustainable housing for those on Afghan resettlement and Ukrainian sponsorship schemes.

The Government recognises that homelessness levels are far too high and this can have a devastating impact on those affected, including young people. We will look at these issues carefully and will consider youth homelessness as we develop our long-term, cross-government strategy working with Mayors and councils across the country, to get us back on track to ending homelessness.

The Homelessness Prevention Grant is allocated to councils across England based on local homelessness pressures and is used to meet local needs. Wolverhampton will receive £1,892,940.00 for 2025-26 through the Homelessness Prevention Grant.

Temporary accommodation must be suitable in relation to the applicant and to all members of their household who normally reside with them, or who might reasonably be expected to reside with them. Applicants may ask for a review on request of the housing authority’s decision that the accommodation offered to them is suitable.

The £1.2 billion Local Authority Housing Fund will provide capital funding directly to English councils and is expected to provide up to 7,000 homes by 2026. It will create a lasting asset for UK nationals by building a sustainable stock of affordable housing for local communities. The Local Authority Housing Fund will ease local homelessness pressures, reduce spending on unsuitable B&B accommodation, and provide safe and sustainable housing for those on Afghan resettlement and Ukrainian sponsorship schemes.

We have carried out an Impact Assessment, which is in the public domain and is available on the Bills Parliament web page. The benefits related to wellbeing in the Impact Assessment are not quantified but are explored through breakeven analysis. The analysis seeks to estimate the non-monetised benefits required to offset the estimated net monetised impacts of the policy.

The bill largely follows the recommendations of the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act, which heard from a broad range of stakeholders and views, including service users and carers, to make recommendations to improve people’s experience of the Mental Health Act.

The government are committed to introducing Awaab’s Law to the social rented sector, setting new time limits for social landlords to fix dangerous hazards which can have a serious impact on the health of residents, including damp and mould. We are working with social housing providers and other stakeholders to determine how we best implement Awaab’s Law. We will develop new guidance for landlords and residents on the new duties under the forthcoming regulations.

The department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. We know how challenging it currently is for local authorities to arrange home-to-school travel for all eligible children, and that the cost of doing so has increased in recent years. We are grateful for local authorities’ considerable efforts in ensuring eligible children can continue to get to school.

Most central government funding for home-to-school travel is provided through the Local Government Finance Settlement, which is administered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The government recognises the challenges local authorities are facing. That is why the Autumn Budget included the announcement of £1.3 billion of new grant funding in the 2025/26 financial year for local government to deliver core services. Together with local income from council tax and business rates, this will provide a real terms increase in core spending power of around 3.2%.

Most of the increase in the cost of home-to-school travel can be attributed to transport for children with special educational needs. This is largely due to an increase in the number of children with education, health and care plans and the number of those children who have to travel long distances to a school that can meet their needs. The department is committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools so fewer children need to travel long distances to a school that can meet their needs. This will reduce home-to-school travel costs for local authorities over time.

The department publishes statutory guidance to assist local authorities in meeting their home-to-school travel duties, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-to-school-travel-and-transport-guidance. Departmental officials host bi-monthly online meetings to which all local authority school travel officers are invited to share good practice and seek advice from one another and the department.

People on ‘long-term sickness benefits’ have been assumed as those in the main phase of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and the Universal Credit (UC) Limited Capability to Work (LCW) and Limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) groups. The Department regularly publishes Benefit Combination statistics on Stat-Xplore and these were extended inFebruary 2024 to include additional information for those on ESA and the UC Health Journey, so can now be used to provide the information, from quarter ending May 2019 to the end of the latest quarter, August 2023.

The figures can be obtained from the ‘Benefit Combinations - Data from May 2019 for England and Wales’ dataset using the ‘Additional Claim Details’ options. The ‘ESA Phase of Claim’ and ‘UC Health Journey’ options should be used to identify quarterly totals for ESA Support Group (SG), ESA Work-related Activity Group (WRAG), Universal Credit Limited Capability to Work (LCW) and Limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) groups, and those on one benefit but not the other using the ‘Not On’ options. The ‘Geography’ option can then be used to filter by the relevant Westminster Parliamentary Constituency.

Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required.

Using the Benefit Combinations data on Stat-Xplore, the number of people on long-term sickness benefits in the Wolverhampton South East constituency is provided in the table below:

Source: Stat-Xplore

Notes:

1. Totals are rounded to 10.
2. UC Data is not available prior to 2019 as some UC claims were recorded on an interim operational system called UC Live Service (UCLS). Figures for UCLS Health claimants are not currently collated and to develop that information would incur disproportionate cost.
3. A person can claim both ESA and be on the UC health caseload and these claimants would be counted in each separate caseload in the published data on Stat-Xplore. Benefit Combinations data on Stat-Xplore allows these 'Dual claims' to be identified and only counted once in the above.

Recent levels of reliability on railway services through Shrewsbury have not been acceptable due to a combination of train and infrastructure issues. Train issues have resulted from Transport for Wales (TfW) recently having to withdraw one of its fleets for safety checks, and from West Midlands Trains (WMT) introducing a new fleet on this route which (in common with all new fleets) is taking a while to reach the required levels of reliability.

In addition, there has been an increase in infrastructure issues, some caused by cable theft, and Network Rail has deployed mitigating measures such as enhanced patrols as a result.

The Department and West Midlands Rail Executive (WMRE) are closely working with WMT and officials from TfW on these issues. I am assured good progress has been made and improvements in services should be seen by passengers shortly.

All mail is actioned by the Mail Opening Unit on delivery from Royal Mail on date of receipt. It is processed within 24 hours which includes opening, scanning and routing to the relevant teams in DWP. There are no backlogs of work requiring opening or scanning that would require storage. Once scanned DWP manages a head of work of cases which are not automatically routed and require manual intervention. These are managed digitally.

Total number of envelopes (scanned and hard copy) processed at the Mail Opening Unit is as follows:

• Jan - Dec 2020 – 10,412,771
• Jan – Dec 2021 – 9,986,764
• Jan- Dec 2022 – 9,158,530
• Jan 2023 – 912,636

In addition, internal courier delivery, documents amounting to:

• Jan- Dec 2020 – 1,856,577
  Jan – Dec 2021 – 1,612,310
• Jan- Dec 2022 – 1,103,679
• Jan 2023 – 105,245

January 2023 is the most recent month for which we have figures.

As of 8 March 2023, over 15,000 people have registered with the Better Health: Rewards pilot.

As of 8 March 2023, the total spend on advertising for the Better Health: Rewards pilot is £80,000 excluding VAT.

The Better Health: Rewards pilot is set up in a way which will enable us to generate a range of strong evidence on the impact of the scheme on participants and their health behaviours. We will use the learnings from the pilot to inform the future direction of the programme.

In March 2021, the Department committed to develop a new approach to health incentives that aims to support people to eat better and move more. The pilot launched on 17 February 2023 and is available to all adults who live in Wolverhampton. A contract was awarded in October 2021 to develop and deliver the pilot and costs to date are within the advertised contract value of up to £2 million.

The Department has committed up to £3 million to be spent on rewards for participants. The pilot will run for up to six months during which time participants will be able to earn points and redeem them for rewards.

I join my hon. Friend in commending all her local sporting organisations for the job they do. She is absolutely right that prevention is better than cure, and ensuring that we can support people to live healthy, fulfilling lives is absolutely part of our plan. That is why we are investing in football pitches, tennis courts and youth facilities right up and down the country, and I am glad that my hon. Friend’s constituents are benefiting.

I am grateful for the £3 million that the Government have sent to Wolverhampton to trial the new Better Health app, which will support Wulfrunians to make better choices about their diet and fitness. Will the Prime Minister welcome this, and also celebrate our grassroots sports clubs in Wolverhampton, especially Wednesfield Aces cycle speedway club, which celebrated its diamond jubilee last year?

We are unable to provide the information requested as it is currently subject to legal professional privilege.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

As of 1 April 2022 this Department employed 208 civil servants at its Wolverhampton office. We have also additionally recruited a further 65 people to our Wolverhampton office who have not commenced in post but are in the process of being onboarded into the Department.