Children: Local Government Services

(asked on 14th May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will assess the effectiveness of the way in which local authorities are funded to provide statutory services to children.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 22nd May 2018

Funding for children’s services is an un-ring-fenced part of the wider local government finance settlement, to give local authorities the flexibility to focus on locally determined priorities and, of course, their statutory responsibilities, including children’s social care. Over the five year period from 2015-16 to 2019-20 councils will have access to more than £200 billion 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 to local government - £44.3 billion in 2017-18 to £45.1 billion in 2018-19.

The government’s fair funding review of relative needs and resources will develop a robust, up-to-date approach to distributing funding across all local authorities in England at local government finance settlements, including for children’s services. We are working towards implementation in 2020/21, while keeping this date under review as our work progresses.

To inform the review, the Department for Education and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government have jointly commissioned a data research and collection project on the cost and demand pressures for children’s services, to understand local authorities’ relative funding needs.

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