Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the level of funding for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

Before making decisions on the 2018/19 police funding settlement, I spoke to every police force in England and Wales to understand how demands on them were changing. This year, we have enabled Police and Crime Commissioners to increase their direct funding by £280m through greater flexibility to raise precept. In West Yorkshire, the PCC used this flexibility to increase his direct funding by £9.9m this year.

Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work. Overall fire and rescue authorities will receive around £2.3 billion in 2018/19. In 2018/19 West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority will receive £79.1m in core spending power. This is an increase of 0.8% compared with 2017/18. In addition, at March 2017, West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority held £33m in reserve, equivalent to 42% of core spending power.