Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the costs for rural authorities of delivering services across large and dispersed communities.

The government published the Local government finance policy statement 2026-27 to 2028-29 and response to the Fair Funding Review 2.0 on Thursday 20 November, which set out the government's plans to introduce a fairer and evidence-led funding system. The government also published the Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2026-2027 to 2028-2029 on Wednesday 17 December 2025.

The government is committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. Our updates will account for local circumstances, including the variation in cost of delivering services, such as between rural and urban areas. We are including a journey times adjustment, which is within the area cost adjustment applied to our funding formulas, which accounts for the impact on the cost of labour of the difference in travel times to provide services. We are also including a remoteness adjustment within the adult social care formula and increasing the cap within the home to school transport formula from 20 miles to 50 miles. In addition, we are using updated deprivation data in our assessment of need, to help ensure that deprivation in rural areas is captured more accurately.

The government is considering the responses received following the consultation of the Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2026 to 2027 and will set out a position when the final Settlement is published in early February.