Oral Answers to Questions

Terry Jermy Excerpts
Monday 9th June 2025

(3 days, 16 hours ago)

Commons Chamber
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Helen Hayes Portrait Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
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14. What steps her Department is taking to help ensure that councils are financially stable.

Terry Jermy Portrait Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
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21. What steps her Department is taking to ensure that councils in areas with higher levels of deprivation receive adequate funding.

Jim McMahon Portrait The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon)
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The Government have delivered a settlement that begins to fix the foundations and makes available over £69 billion in 2025-26. In 2026-27, an improved approach will direct funding where it is needed most and provide certainty through the first multi-year settlement in over a decade.

--- Later in debate ---
Jim McMahon Portrait Jim McMahon
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We are laying the groundwork now, ahead of the provisional settlement, which will be the first multi-year settlement in over a decade and will deal with a lot of the structural issues. If it is any help, the Government understand and accept that it is not right or acceptable for councils that have done everything that has been asked of them and provided good public services, particularly for young people, to find themselves at the financial cliff edge as a result. We have an absolute commitment to work through those issues.

Terry Jermy Portrait Terry Jermy
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Pockets of deprivation in many rural communities, like my South West Norfolk constituency, are often masked by more affluent surroundings. Will the Minister reassure me that financial support from the Government for local councils in rural areas reflects those concerns about isolated deprivation?

Jim McMahon Portrait Jim McMahon
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This month, we are consulting on an updated assessment of need that we will implement from 2026-27. Importantly, that includes the indices of multiple deprivation, a designated national statistic, and it will drill down to deprivation levels of between 400 and 1,200 households in each of those units. Our intention is to address the issues found in the pockets of deprivation in every community, including rural and coastal communities where they are sometimes drowned out because of the sea of affluence around them. It is important that we get to deprivation wherever it exists.