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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding has been allocated by Lancashire County Council gully cleaning; what proportion of that funding was allocated to West Lancashire, and how that compares with the funding allocated by other local authorities.

This year’s settlement will see a real terms increase in resources to local government over the next two years moving from £44.3 billion in 2017-18 to £45.6 billion in 2019-20.

Lancashire County Council will have available £1.4 billion in Core Spending Power between 2017/18 to 2019/20.

Data on either planned or actual expenditure on specific activities such as gully clearing are not held centrally. Figures on broader activity categories are provided to the Department by local authorities and these are available in revenue account budget and revenue outturn individual authority data at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing

As democratically elected organisations, local authorities are independent of central government and are responsible for managing their budgets in line with local priorities.