Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 26 March 2018 to Question 133410 on Schools: Finance, what criteria his Department uses for decisions to (a) allow, (b) refuse and (c) partially allow funding transfers.

For the funding year 2018 to 2019, the schools block of the Dedicated Schools Grant is ring-fenced and local authorities can only transfer up to 0.5 per cent of their schools block funding to another block, if they have the approval of their schools forum. Local authorities were only required to submit a request to my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State if they wished to transfer more than 0.5 per cent out of the schools block, and/or if they did not receive support from the schools forum.

Decisions have been made on 27 requests, the attached table details the outcome of each request, categorised by the percentage transfer. There are no outstanding requests to transfer funding from the schools block to the high needs block.

Each request was assessed against the factors published in paragraph 122 of the schools revenue funding 2018 to 2019 operational guide available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pre-16-schools-funding-guidance-for-2018-to-2019. Decisions were made based on the evidence provided by the local authority for each element of their disapplication request.