Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that local authority children’s services receive sufficient funding to support vulnerable young people.

The 2015 Spending Review made available more than £200 billion until 2020 for councils to deliver the local services their communities want to see, including children’s services. In February, Parliament confirmed the 2018-19 settlement for local government, providing a real terms increase in resources available, from £44.3 billion in 2017-18 to £45.1 billion in 2018-19. Funding for children’s services is an un-ring fenced part of the wider local government finance settlement. Local authorities have used this flexibility to increase spending on the most vulnerable children by around a £1 billion since 2010.