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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, which funds he plans to remove competitive bidding from to reduce the amount of funding streams allocated to councils through competitive bidding.

The Government recognises the importance of providing local authorities with longer-term clarity to enable their forward planning. Decisions about funding beyond this financial year will be made at the Spending Review later this year. Government has a long-standing policy to provide grant funding to local government on a non-ringfenced basis as part of the commitment to greater localism. This policy provides greater funding flexibility to local authorities and supports them to make spending decisions based on their local needs and priorities. The Local Government Finance settlement and the vast majority of local government’s Core Spending Power (£51.3 billion) are un-ringfenced, giving local authorities flexibility over their spending decisions.