Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Local Government Association's projection that the cost of children’s social care will increase by an estimated £600 million each year until 2024-25, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of that increase; and what steps his Department is taking to support local authorities to meet that extra cost.

The department recognises the challenges local authorities are facing. In recent years, the government have boosted real-term funding to local, including creating the social care grant which has increased significantly from £410 million in 2019 to £1.7 billion this year and will continue to increase in the financial year 2022-23.

Next financial year (2022-23), the government is providing over £630 million additional funding into the social care grant, bringing the grant total to £2.4 billion. The department is also providing a one-off services grant in the 2022-23 financial year worth over £800 million that can be used for all services, including children’s social care.

In total, local authorities will have access to £54.1 billion for the 2022-23 financial year, an increase of up to £3.7 billion on the previous financial year 2021-22.

Further, the government has provided an additional £200 million for Supporting Families announced at the Budget and Spending Round 2021. This represents around a 40% real-terms uplift in funding for the programme by the 2024-25 financial year, taking total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million.