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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the report by children's charities, entitled Children and young people’s services: Funding and spending 2010-11 to 2018-19, published in May 2020, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the £2.2 billion reduction in funding available for local authority children’s services since 2010-11 identified in that report.

The last three local government finance settlement announcements have all included real terms increases to local authorities. For 2021-22, Government is making £2.3 billion extra available to local government in 2021-22. This means that next year, Core Spending Power in England will rise by up to 4.6% in cash terms.

Supporting councils to maintain critical mainstream services, such as Children’s Services continues to be our key priority. This year’s local government finance settlement rolled forward £1.4 billion of Social Care Grant funding from 2020-21, and added a further £300 million funding, taking the total Social Care Grant to £1.7 billion for 2021/22.