Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department has made an assessment of the correlation between changes in (a) local authority funding and (b) changes in the level of provision of local authority services, excluding social care, since 2010.

As democratically elected organisations, local authorities are independent of central government, and are responsible for managing their budgets in line with local priorities and their legal duties.

Central government funding cannot in isolation provide a true representation of local authority finances. The responsibilities, structure and makeup of local authorities have changed significantly since 2010 and spending power, formula grants and settlement funding assessments are not directly comparable over this period. For example, with the introduction of the Business Rates Retention Scheme, local authorities estimate they will keep around £2.4 billion in business rates growth in 2018-19.

As announced in the Local Government Finance Settlement, Core Spending Power is forecast to increase from £45.1 billion in 2018-19 to £46.4 billion in 2019-20. This is a cash-increase of 2.8 per cent and real-terms increase in resources available to local authorities. In the long term, the Spending Review will determine funding for local government from 2020-21 onwards and will enable us to look at local government spending in the round.