Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to help ensure that funding for local government enables councils to have adequate resources to support a rise in child placements in statutory provision and foster care.

The 2022/23 provisional Local Government Finance Settlement makes available an additional £3.5 billion to councils. This is an increase in local authority funding for 2022/23 of over 4% in real terms, which will ensure councils across the country have the resources they need to deliver key services, including Adult and Children's Social Care.

Local authorities can make use of over £1 billion of additional resource specifically for social care in 2022/23. This includes:

• £636 million more into the Social Care Grant, including funding for equalisation against the 1% Adult Social Care precept;
• £63 million into the improved Better Care Fund, providing an inflationary uplift to support integrated working with the NHS, and;
• a 1% Adult Social Care precept and deferred flexibilities from last year's settlement.

On top of this funding to address core pressures, £162 million in adult social care reform funding will be allocated in 2022/23 to support local authorities as they prepare their markets for adult social care reform and to help move towards paying a fair cost of care.