Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to ensure fairness in the allocation of funding to local government.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

14. What steps his Department is taking to ensure fairness in the allocation of funding to local government.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

We are undertaking a fair funding review of local authorities’ relative needs and resources to address concerns about the fairness of the current system, and I am pleased to say that we are making good progress in collaboration with the sector in order to introduce a simple, fair and transparent funding formula.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

It is refreshing to hear my hon. Friend talk about growth in the context of local government funding. Economic growth is the only sustainable way to ensure the vibrancy of our local communities and to raise the vital money that we need to fund our services. I am delighted to tell him that the Government are committed to implementing further retention of business rates, so that his local authority, like all others, will have both an incentive and a reward when they drive growth in their local areas.

[Peter Aldous]

I am grateful to the Minister for those replies, but recent work by the County Councils Network has found that, despite additional funding provided to the last funding settlement at the beginning of the year, county areas including Suffolk will face £3.2 billion-worth of funding pressures by 2020. What can the Government do, in advance of the fair funding and comprehensive spending reviews, to ensure that councils are able to meet the essential needs of their residents?

[Rishi Sunak]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work on representing counties in this place, and I am delighted to have met him to discuss this topic on multiple occasions. I agree with him that county councils have done a tremendous job of maintaining services in this climate. I recognise the pressures that he identifies, and I can confirm to him that, in the short term, the Government will soon be publishing a technical consultation for local government finance in the upcoming settlement. As I said to the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), we will be including a consultation on the issue of negative revenue support grant, and I can also confirm that there will be a new round of business rate retention pilots.