Written questions by Anderson.

Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to improve the delivery of public services in rural areas.

The Government believes that it is important that rural communities have the opportunity to help shape decisions that affect them. As rural affairs lead, Defra continues to encourage all Government Departments to rural proof their policies, including engaging rural stakeholders in their public consultations and engagement processes. Defra also facilitates engagement with rural people and businesses via its Rural Insights Forum. The forum is a group of stakeholders that represent rural communities.Rural representatives and sector specific experts are also engaged with Defra’s Rural Taskforce, which is considering the value and contribution of rural communities and businesses in achieving the Government’s priorities.

What plans his Department has to accelerate complementary reforms on the electricity distribution network to ensure that grid connections are accelerated, in addition to reforms to the planning regime for electricity transmission infrastructure.

The Government will consult this year on an ambitious package of reforms to land rights and consents processes for electricity network infrastructure based on responses to a 2022 Call for Evidence and proposals put forward by the Energy Network Association in their nine-point plan. The consultation will include proposals to expand planning consent exemptions to include low-voltage connections and upgrades in England and Wales. Any changes made to these processes will be developed with full consideration of the rights of landowners.

With reference to the Energy Networks Association’s report entitled Our common sense plan for planning, published in December 2023, if he will make it his policy to (a) amend permitted development rights for the upgrading of the electricity distribution network infrastructure and (b) implement the nine point plan.

The Government will consult this year on an ambitious package of reforms to land rights and consents processes for electricity network infrastructure based on responses to a 2022 Call for Evidence and proposals put forward by the Energy Network Association in their nine-point plan. The consultation will include proposals to expand planning consent exemptions to include low-voltage connections and upgrades in England and Wales. Any changes made to these processes will be developed with full consideration of the rights of landowners.

Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of the agriculture budget will be spent in South Shropshire constituency.

At February’s NFU Conference, the Secretary of State announced a raft of new policies to put money in the pockets of farmers in South Shropshire, and across the country.We remain committed to a farming budget of £2.4 billion for 2025/25 and are on track to do so.We will be working closely with farmers and industry stakeholders to design a future SFI offer that fairly and responsibly directs funding. Further details about the reformed SFI offer will be announced following the spending review in summer 2025.We plan to launch the new Higher Tier scheme later this year; Capital Grants will re-open in summer 2025; we continue to move forward with Landscape Recovery; we are increasing payment rates for Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement holders to recognise their ongoing commitment to delivering environmental outcome; and we are making £110 million available for new grant competitions to support research and innovation, technology and equipment for farmers.

What steps she is taking support (a) schools and (b) parents with school transport in rural areas.

The department’s home-to-school travel policy aims to make sure that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities are responsible for arranging free home-to-school travel for eligible children. A child is eligible if they are of compulsory school age, 5 to 16, attend their nearest school and would not be able to walk there because of the distance, their special educational needs, a disability or mobility problem, or because the nature of the route means it would be unsafe for them to do so. There are extended rights to free travel for children from low-income families.In addition, the Bus Services Bill will put the power over local bus services in the hands of local leaders to ensure networks can meet the needs of communities who rely on them.

Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken to improve the condition of Sites of Specific Scientific Interest.

SSSIs continue to be one of the most effective tools for protecting and enhancing biodiversity and deliver a wide range of health and socio-economic benefits. Defra is working with Natural England to improve the efficiency of SSSI monitoring and drive delivery of a prioritised programme of action to improve SSSI condition. This includes advising farmers on land management changes, working at a catchment-scale with partners to improve water quality and regulating fairly and proportionately to prevent harm and improve site condition. In the autumn budget we also allocated £13 million to Protected Site Strategies which will develop and implement spatial restoration plans for priority sites. These strategies will put action in place to restore protected sites and manage the impact of environmental harm. The Nature Restoration Fund in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will also allow us to take a more strategic approach to the restoration of protected sites and species, and deliver improved environmental outcomes.

What steps he is taking to improve the retention and recruitment of dentists in rural areas.

We are aware of the challenges faced in accessing a dentist, particularly in rural and coastal areas. The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.The additional 700,000 urgent dental appointments are being made available across the country, with specific expectations for each region. These targets are more heavily weighted towards those areas where they are needed the most.Integrated care boards have also started to advertise posts through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see up to 240 dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years. As of 10 April 2025, in England, there are 53 dentists in post with a further 44 dentists who have been recruited but are yet to start in post under this scheme. Another 256 posts are currently advertised.

What steps she is taking to help increase active travel options in rural areas.

The Department for Transport recently announced almost £300 million of funding to boost active travel across England. This includes £222.5 million to local authorities outside of London, including rural areas. Active Travel England (ATE) supports local authorities through officer training to enable delivery of high-quality walking and cycling schemes, as well as design workshops and design assurance reviews of schemes under development. ATE is developing specific guidance for good practice application in rural areas and expects to publish this shortly. Officers in ATE and the Department regularly engage with colleagues in DEFRA about how best to harmonise the government’s approach to enabling sustainable and active transport in rural areas.

Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to improve mobile reliability in rural areas.

4G geographic coverage from at least one mobile network operator (MNO) has now reached over 95% of the UK landmass, but our ambition is for all populated areas of the UK to benefit from high quality, reliable, 5G standalone coverage by 2030; this includes rural areas.We continue to work closely with the MNOs and are committed to ensuring we have the right policy and regulatory framework in place to support investment into mobile networks and competition in the market, while Ofcom’s improved online coverage checker, which will go live in the second half of June, will help consumers identify the MNOs with the best coverage in their area.We are also collaborating with Ofcom to carry out further analysis on mobile network resilience, following a consultation that invited input from the industry and the public on power backup provision.

Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to improve the long-term viability of local authority-owned leisure centres.

The Government recognises the importance of ensuring public access to leisure facilities which are vital spaces for people of all ages to stay fit and healthy, and which play an important role within communities. The ongoing responsibility of providing access to public leisure facilities lies at local authority level with funding levels set by MHCLG as part of the Local Government Finance Settlement. The Government encourages local authorities to make investments which offer the right opportunities and facilities for the communities they serve, investing in sport and physical activity with a place-based approach, to meet the needs of individual communities. Future funding of community sports facilities will be considered as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.

What steps she is taking to ensure rural schools are able to access the Breakfast Clubs Early Adopters scheme.

In order to test and learn about how best to support schools in implementing new free universal breakfast clubs, the department has selected over 750 early adopter schools who began delivering from the start of the 2025 summer term, ahead of national roll out to all schools with primary-aged children.Schools have been selected to ensure a representative sample of all primary schools across a range of locations, including rural schools.By taking this approach, we will be able to gain insights into any challenges and barriers schools may face, in order to develop solutions ahead of national roll out.

Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to respond to the correspondence of 5 December 2024 from the hon. Member for South Shropshire, inviting him to meet farmers in his constituency.

Thank you for your invitation. Ministers regularly engage and visit farmers across England and have met with farming organisations and representatives nearly every week since coming into Government, and I hope to visit farmers in your constituency soon.

What steps she is taking to support the sustainability of bus services in rural areas.

The government introduced the Bus Services (No.2) Bill on 17 December as part of its ambitious plan for bus reform. The Bill puts the power over local bus services back in the hands of local leaders and is intended to ensure bus services reflect the needs of the communities that rely on them right across England, including in rural areas. The government has committed to increasing accountability by including a measure on socially necessary services so that local authorities and bus operators have to have regard for alternatives to changing or cancelling services. In addition, the government has confirmed £955 million for the 2025 to 2026 financial year to support and improve bus services in England outside London. This includes £243 million for bus operators and £712 million allocated to local authorities across the country, of which Shropshire Council has been allocated over £4.4 million. Local authorities can use this funding to introduce new bus routes, make services more frequent and protect crucial bus routes for local communities.

If she will reduce the cost of the Veterans Railcard.

We are not planning to reduce the price of the Veterans’ Railcard. Any long-term changes or concessions made to rail fares policy will require balancing against the potential impacts on passengers, taxpayers and the railway.

Communities and Local Government, what steps she is taking to tackle pockets of deprivation in rural local authority areas.

The 2025-26 Local Government Finance Settlement begins to fix the foundations of local government by targeting additional funding to places with greatest need and demand for services (using deprivation as a proxy for this), and less ability to raise income locally, through a new Recovery Grant, worth £600 million. Through the Settlement, places with a significant rural population will on average receive almost a 6% increase in their Core Spending Power next year, which is a real terms increase. Broader redistribution of funding will follow from 2026-27 and we are committed to fundamentally reforming how we assess need to ensure funding is distributed to where it is needed most. The government will use the best available evidence to assess differences in the need for local government services – including deprivation – and resources available to local authorities.

Whether funding will be allocated to roll out hotspot policing in rural areas.

This Government has awarded £66.3m in 2025/26 to all 43 Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales for the Hot Spot Action Fund. This funding is for high-visibility patrolling in the areas with the highest densities (‘hotspots’) of knife crime and anti-social behaviour, as well as problem-oriented policing to tackle the longer-term drivers of crime.This funding can be used to roll-out hotspot policing in rural areas if the area has a high density of knife crime and anti-social behaviour relative to the force area. Where funding is specifically targeted is an operational decision for individual PCCs and police forces. West Mercia Police (which includes South Shropshire) has been awarded £1m from this fund in 2025/26.We are also providing over £800,000 in 25/26 for the National Rural Crime Unit and National Wildlife Crime Unit. This funding will support police forces to tackle rural and wildlife crimes, including organised theft and disrupting serious and organised crime groups.

What steps he has taken to support access to orthopaedic care for veterans.

Veterans with an orthopaedic condition related to their time in service can ask their general practitioner to refer them to Op RESTORE. Op RESTORE is an integrated physical health and wellbeing service, and works to ensure that veterans are seen in the right clinical pathway by the right clinician. Op RESTORE works in collaboration with many military charities to provide veterans with wellbeing support to ensure they ‘wait well’ for treatment.The Government recognises that some veterans may not wish to use bespoke services for veterans, and in some cases orthopaedic conditions may occur that are not attributable to their time in service. In these instances, veterans are able to access the full range of mainstream orthopaedic services commissioned by their local National Health Service integrated care board. As well as local NHS hospitals, this includes local arrangements with the independent sector and supporting services, such as diagnostics and physiotherapy provided by musculoskeletal services, to ensure care is provided as close to the veteran’s home as possible.

What steps she has taken to increase awareness of the availability of Pension Credit in rural areas.

The Government wants all pensioners to get the support to which they are rightly entitled. That is why we ran the biggest ever Pension Credit take-up campaign across the whole of Great Britain. This included adverts on television; radio (including Greatest Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire, Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire, Classic FM Midlands, Smooth Radio); social media; on YouTube; on advertising screens in Pharmacies, Post Offices and leisure centres. The campaign also featured on train advertising panels as well as in national and regional press (including the Shropshire Star).As part of the campaign, the Department engaged with all councils in Great Britain, through the regular Local Authority Welfare Direct bulletins. Shropshire Council supported the Pension Credit campaign during our ‘Week of Action’ in September 2024, and on social media.More recently, around 11 million pensioners will have received a leaflet promoting Pension Credit along with their State Pension uprating letter.Further campaign and promotional activity is planned for this year.The latest Pension Credit applications and awards statistics were published on 27 February and are available at: Pension Credit applications and awards: February 2025 - GOV.UK(opens in a new tab). The statistics show that the Department made almost 50,000 extra awards on the comparable period in 2023/24.

What steps are being taken to support community pharmacies in South Shropshire constituency.

For 2025/26, funding for the core community pharmacy contractual framework has been increased to £3.073 billion. This represents the largest uplift in funding of any part of the National Health Service, at over 19% across 2024/25 and 2025/26.There is also additional funding available, for example for pharmacies delivering Pharmacy First consultations and flu and COVID-19 vaccinations. The Pharmacy Access Scheme also provides additional funding to support pharmacies in areas where there are fewer.This year, legislation will also be laid to enable all pharmacies to benefit from the efficiencies of hub and spoke dispensing and/or using pharmacy technicians to undertake more of the work in pharmacies, enabling pharmacists to spend more time with patients.

What steps he is taking to improve access to NHS dental care in South Shropshire constituency.

The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) across England. For the South Shropshire constituency, this is the NHS Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin ICB. ICBs have been asked to start making extra urgent dental appointments available from April 2025. The Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin ICB is expected to deliver 7,408 additional urgent dental appointments as part of the scheme.