Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the implications for her Department are of the finding of the recent Action for Children's survey on the proportion of Conservative councillors who believe that long-term funding for children's services is a matter of major concern for their councils.

We recognise that local councils delivering children’s services are operating in a challenging fiscal environment and are making tough decisions about priorities. We are supporting them to do this in a number of ways:

• by 2020, we will be spending £6 billion per year on childcare, including £1 billion a year to deliver 30 hours of free childcare and increase our hourly funding rates;
• since 2014, we have invested £200 million in our Innovation and Partners In Practice Programmes to help local councils redesign their children’s services to achieve higher quality and better value for money;
• the Spending Review 2015 made available more than £200 billion to local councils for local services up to 2019-20 and local councils increased spending on children and young people’s services to over £9 billion in 2015-16. In addition, we are in the second year of an unprecedented four-year finance settlement, accepted by 97% of councils, this allows local councils to plan ahead with certainty. Funding for children’s services gives local councils the freedom to target resources flexibly to meet local need; and
• we are committed to working alongside the sector to carry out the Department for Communities and Local Government led Fair Funding Review of how local government funding is distributed.