Local Government Finance

Jane Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Let me first declare an interest. Although I am no longer a borough councillor, I was until last May, and I understand that I still have to register that until 12 months have passed.

I want to thank the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Ministers past and present, because the £600 million is a significant increase and is very welcome. I also thank Leicestershire County Council, Charnwood Borough Council, my parish and town councils, and others throughout the county. My colleagues there do wonderful work, as do the officials, and I greatly appreciate what they do.

I will not go into too much detail about the issue of fairer funding, because it has been well rehearsed. Since 2019 and, I understand, before I entered the House, all the Leicestershire MPs have lobbied Ministers continuously, including many a Secretary of State and many a Chancellor. I will say, however, that if we are talking about a fairer funding formula, the operative word is “fairer”, and that standard is not being met at present. If something could be done about this in the very near future, I would be most grateful.

The arguments about rural areas have also been well rehearsed. I thoroughly support what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder), and it is always worth listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). Many of his points were exactly the points that I was intending to make. I do not like to moan—I prefer to come up with a solution if I possibly can—so I want to suggest something along the lines of what my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) said in the police debate earlier this afternoon. He talked about the use of police resources by other Departments, such as the Department of Health and Social Care, and I think that the same applies to the use of council resources by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) alluded to this, in the context of education, health and care plans. Last Friday evening two of the eight slots in my constituency surgery were about EHCPs, and on the previous Friday three of them were. The county council has a statutory responsibility to deliver EHCPs, but the Department of Health and Social Care can say what it wants about the “H” element without having to deliver the resources. The county council feels that it has to deliver them itself, and that puts additional cost and time pressures on the 20-week window within which it must finalise an EHCP. I should like something to be done about that, so that the Department that asks for something actually pays for it.

Exactly the same happens in my borough council in respect of supported housing benefit. Because some charities in my constituency are not registered social landlords, the council cannot claim the whole of the benefit back from the Department for Work and Pensions, and is therefore out of pocket by about £1.5 million, which is simply unsustainable on a budget of about £16 million a year. Instead of the customers of Departments such as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—the councils—paying for those things, the Department that wants them to be done should pay.

In his opening speech, my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety talked about spending on frontline services. I agree entirely with what he said, but I also believe that if councils spend money on things that they want to do, they should not necessarily be unable to get money back from Departments.