Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to Questions 245 to 259 of his evidence to the Treasury Committee on 25 April 2018 on local authorities, how he defines the term at risk to categorise that level of financial sustainability of local authorities in England; what terms other than at risk he uses to categorise the levels of financial sustainability of local authorities in England; and how many local authorities in England have been defined as (a) at risk and (b) any other level he uses to categorise levels of financial sustainability.

MHCLG has processes in place to provide assurance about the sustainability of individual local authorities. We consider a range of information about individual authorities in order to form judgements about the potential challenges they may face.

While important, finance is often not the determining factor in an authority’s ability to deliver effective services, as noted for example in Max Caller’s independent inspection of Northamptonshire. The assessment made at a sector and individual level is nuanced, and therefore MHCLG does not place authorities into fixed categories.