Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the sustainability of local authority children’s services budgets.

Funding for children’s services is made available through the Local Government Finance Settlement. The department is in the final year of a multi-year settlement deal worth over £200 billion in the five years to 2020.

At the Autumn Budget 2018, the government made £410 million available to local authorities, in 2019/20, for adult and children social care. The government also announced £84 million in targeted, evidence-based interventions which will transform services to reduce demand, saving money for local authorities but most importantly, improving the quality of services for our most vulnerable children.

The government will continue to work closely with the sector to consider long-term children’s services funding as part of the upcoming 2019 Spending Review.