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 authority funding, whether he has conducted a risk assessment of the (a) short-term and (b) long-term financial ability of local authorities to meet the need for local services.

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.

As part of the 2018 local government finance settlement, this Government has also shown its commitment to supporting services by giving local authorities:

• the ability to increase their core Council Tax requirement by an additional one per cent without a local referendum; and

• a further £150 million at final settlement for Adult Social Care in 2018-19 to support local care markets.

In addition, the Government will undertake the next Spending Review in early 2019, so that budgets can be set out in advance for 2020 onwards.