Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the increased cost of living on children’s social care budgets.

Children’s social care services are funded by the core spending power of local government. This is principally made up of council tax, retained business rates and central government grants. As agreed at the 2021 Spending Review, councils have access to £54.1 billion core spending power for their services in 2022/23. This is an increase of £3.7 billion on the 2021/22 financial year.

The government announced in the Autumn Statement that £1.3 billion in 2023/24 and £1.9 billion in 2024/25 will be distributed to local authorities through the Social Care Grant for adult and children’s social care. This is in addition to the funding agreed in the 2021 Spending Review.

We are working with the sector to understand the impact of inflation and will provide further details of the total funding available to local authorities in 2023/24 in the provisional local government finance settlement as soon as is possible this winter.