Tag: Sarah Wollaston

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2015-12-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to provide additional practice guidance on applying planning policy and legislation in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

James Wharton

The National Planning Policy Framework provides strong protection for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is for decision makers to apply that policy and related legislation. The local planning authorities have responsibility for determining planning applications and developing local plan policies in the first instance.

The strong protection for these valued areas is supported by planning guidance. We keep this guidance under review to ensure it reflects up-to-date planning policy.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether, as part of the NHS Five Year Forward View, local sustainability and transformation plans should include measures to improve children and young people’s mental health; and on what outcomes they will be assessed.

Alistair Burt

Local health economies are developing a five year Sustainability and Transformation Plan which will set out how they will implement the Five Year Forward View in their area. They will identify and collectively agree the priorities to address over the next five years. We expect the improvement of children and young people’s mental health to be a key priority for many local health economies and NHS England will support these areas to develop transformative plans for these services. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will be assessed through a new CCG assessment framework and their progress with transformation will be included.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to continue monitoring breastfeeding rates following the abolition of the infant feeding survey; and if he will make a statement.

Ben Gummer

Following the discontinuation of the Infant Feeding Survey, the Department has been exploring with Public Health England (PHE) and other key stakeholders alternative methods and sources of information to monitor the impact of its policy on infant feeding.

In future, the Maternity and Children’s Dataset will regularly capture data on breastfeeding initiation and prevalence from all women using NHS services rather than using a survey sample. This means that local service providers and commissioners can have up-to-date (e.g. quarterly) information about outcomes for their local populations, enabling service provision to be more agile, responsive and targeted.

The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding through the Healthy Child Programme. Breastfeeding is also included in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so that the improvements can be tracked, and action taken as needed.

Since 2010, we have recruited more than 2,100 additional midwives who will provide women with the information, advice and support they need with breastfeeding. A further 6,000 midwives are in training. There are also 3,400 more health visitors than in 2010.

The Department is working with PHE, NHS England and UNICEF to try and encourage women to breastfeed for the first six months, although we recognise that not all mothers choose to or are able to breastfeed.

Support and information is currently available to health professionals and parents through NHS Choices, the National Breastfeeding Helpline, UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative, the Start4Life Information Service for Parents and local peer support programmes.

The Department has not retained a record of how many full-time equivalent staff there were with a specific focus on breastfeeding between 2010 and 2016; breastfeeding policy has always formed part of the larger maternity policy for which the Department has the policy lead. Resources to cover this policy area would have fluctuated according the level of work required at any one time.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times one person has been left on (a) daytime and (b) night-time watch at Falmouth Coastguard Operations Centre in the last five years.

Mr John Hayes

The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.

The network enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre or at any of the nine Coastguard Operations Centres to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast. Workload is managed on a national basis enabling national capability and resource to be available to support any Coastguard Centre when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.

The number of watches when one Coastguard Officer has been on duty at Falmouth in the last five years is as follows:

(a) Daytime – 0

(b) Night Watches – 6.5

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many coastguard rescue teams have been deployed to inland flooding incidents in the past two years; and how many times those teams were called out to such incidents in the past two years.

Mr John Hayes

The capability to specifically record inland flood/civil contingencies flooding incidents has only been available in Her Majesty’s Coastguards Incident Management System since September 2014 as Coastguard Operations Centres transitioned incrementally into its national network. On the basis of the records available, at least 31 teams on 13 occasions have been deployed to inland flooding incidents in the past two years.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2015-12-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what account will be taken of NICE’s clinical guidelines on levels of patient access in setting the budgets devolved by NHS England to clinical commissioning groups for obesity surgery from April 2016.

George Freeman

NHS England would expect commissioners to take account of this guidance when commissioning services.

Any transfer of budget from NHS England to devolved areas will be on the basis of existing contractual activity.

Before the transfer of services, NHS England will complete a data capture exercise, working with providers through the specialised commissioning hubs, to collect the current activity level. This will provide the basis for the transfer of the budget. Governance sign off will then be agreed at NHS England Board level.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to extend the mental health and schools link pilot scheme to post-16 further education establishments.

Edward Timpson

The Department will make a decision on how to build on the outcome of the pilot once the training workshops have been delivered and the evaluation has been completed. This pilot is currently running in 27 Clinical Commissioning Group areas.

Officials are working with the Association of Colleges to ensure that effective links are being made between the pilot areas and their local colleges, so that they are involved in the development of shared protocols and longer term planning for the provision of children’s mental health services.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many full-time equivalent staff in his Department were working on breastfeeding in each year from 2010 to 2016.

Ben Gummer

Following the discontinuation of the Infant Feeding Survey, the Department has been exploring with Public Health England (PHE) and other key stakeholders alternative methods and sources of information to monitor the impact of its policy on infant feeding.

In future, the Maternity and Children’s Dataset will regularly capture data on breastfeeding initiation and prevalence from all women using NHS services rather than using a survey sample. This means that local service providers and commissioners can have up-to-date (e.g. quarterly) information about outcomes for their local populations, enabling service provision to be more agile, responsive and targeted.

The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding through the Healthy Child Programme. Breastfeeding is also included in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so that the improvements can be tracked, and action taken as needed.

Since 2010, we have recruited more than 2,100 additional midwives who will provide women with the information, advice and support they need with breastfeeding. A further 6,000 midwives are in training. There are also 3,400 more health visitors than in 2010.

The Department is working with PHE, NHS England and UNICEF to try and encourage women to breastfeed for the first six months, although we recognise that not all mothers choose to or are able to breastfeed.

Support and information is currently available to health professionals and parents through NHS Choices, the National Breastfeeding Helpline, UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative, the Start4Life Information Service for Parents and local peer support programmes.

The Department has not retained a record of how many full-time equivalent staff there were with a specific focus on breastfeeding between 2010 and 2016; breastfeeding policy has always formed part of the larger maternity policy for which the Department has the policy lead. Resources to cover this policy area would have fluctuated according the level of work required at any one time.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average length of time is from joining for an employee to qualify as a (a) maritime operations commander, (b) maritime operations controller, (c) senior operations officer and (d) maritime operations officer.

Mr John Hayes

The length of time taken to train Coastguard Officers is entirely dependent on their level of experience and competence when they join Her Majesty’s Coastguard and the level of experience of competence they gain prior to any internal promotion. Therefore an average for these would be misleading.

On entry to HM Coastguard as a Maritime Operations Officer it will take between six and 12 months to become trained, depending on previous maritime experience and competence.

HM Coastguard do not recruit direct entry Senior Maritime Operations Officers, they are internally recruited from the cadre of fully trained Maritime Operations Officers who will then undertake a further six months of training for this post.

As roles that can be directly recruited from outside HM Coastguard the training for both Maritime Operations Controllers and Maritime Operations Commanders is entirely dependent on their prevailing maritime experience and is in effect bespoke for the individual concerned.

It should be noted that the roles senior watch manager, watch manager, watch officer and watch assistant no longer exist within HM Coastguard.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many callouts have been recorded for each coastguard rescue team along the south coast from Plymouth to Selsey Bill in each of the last five years.

Mr John Hayes

The number of incidents recorded for each Coastguard Rescue Team along the south coast from Plymouth to Selsey Bill in each of the last five years is shown below:

	Bigbury	Bembridge	Beer	Berry Head	Dartmouth	Exmouth	Hope Cove	Kimmeridge
2011	15	75	37	115	52	105	28	24
2012	25	67	38	95	32	93	36	21
2013	16	60	32	86	38	54	16	7
2014	29	71	31	93	55	63	36	15
2015	20	42	26	86	20	48	78	17

	Lymington	Lulworth	Lyme Regis	Newport IOW	Portland Bill	Plymouth	Poole	Prawle
2011	88	40	46		67	73	138	23
2012	69	45	52		53	62	131	15
2013	47	42	33		58	50	95	24
2014	52	26	44		54	48	98	34
2015	48	31	43	22	40	87	71	8

	Selsey	Southampton	Swanage	Torbay	Teignmouth	Ventnor	West Bay	Wyke	Yealm
2011	1	123	133	143	89	44	38	192	18
2012		84	145	137	64	26	43	152	14
2013		69	110	124	71	40	34	119	18
2014		121	108	122	74	41	30	83	26
2015		144	81	90	66	37	29		7