Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many local authorities reported an (a) underspend and (b) overspend on public health grants in the last five financial years.

Local authorities must account for the full allocated Public Health Grant and must accrue any money that is not committed to a ring-fenced reserve. These reserves serve an important purpose, for example to support strategic changes which may involve a one-off change in spending patterns, or as provision against future spending plans. The following table shows the movement of public health reserve levels as reported by each local authority from 2019/20 to 2023/24:

Source: local authority revenue outturn data, available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing

Notes:

1. the data for 2020/21 and 2021/22 includes the impact of the Contain Outbreak Management Fund on Grants and the impact of COVID-19 on services, the information published for 2023/24 does not include any reserve outturn data for two local authorities, Birmingham and Westmorland and Furness, and the data for Barking and Dagenham was only partially completed.
2. the reserve outturn data refers to the whole of the Department’s local authority Public Health Spend, not just the Public Health Grant.
3. the total number of local authorities may vary across years due to local government structural changes.

Local authorities do not report underspends on the Public Health Grant.