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

To ask His Majesty's Government what process they are using to determine the allocation for (1) social care, (2) funding guarantees, and (3) grants, under their plans to provide an additional £600 million funding to councils.

On the 24^th of January, the department announced our intention to increase the level of funding to local government in the Settlement by £600 million. Taking into account this new funding, local government in England will see an increase in Core Spending Power of up to £4.5 billion next year, taking the total to £64.7 billion in 2024-25.

£500 million of this new funding will be distributed to councils with responsibility for Social Care services through the Social Care Grant. The Adult Social Care Relative Needs Formula is the basis for Social Care Grant allocations and is used to evaluate local authorities’ need for funding relative to one another. We are supporting all of local government through the sector-wide Funding Guarantee, ensuring all local authorities will see a minimum 4% increase in Core Spending Power before local council tax decisions – an increase from the 3% Funding Guarantee in 2023-24.

Finally, we are increasing the Rural Services Delivery Grant to £110 million in 2024-25, its highest ever level. The distribution of this grant will remain unchanged next year, and will continue to be distributed to the top-quartile of local authorities ranked by ‘super-sparsity’, a measure of rurality.