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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the oral evidence given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Treasury Committee on 25 April 2018, on the work of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will break down the £23 billion in reserves held by local authorities and identify the proportion of those reserves that are unearmarked or not ring-fenced.

Of the £23.1 billion in revenue reserves held by English local authorities as of 31 March 2017, non-ringfenced reserves make up £21.0 billion and have increased by 47 per cent since 31 March 2011.

Of this, unallocated reserves amount to around £4.2 billion. It is for individual local authorities to decide on the level of unearmaked reserves that they should hold, based on their known financial commitments and risk appetite.

Reserves data is published in Table 7 as part of MHCLG’s Local Authority Revenue Expenditure and Financing:2016-17 Final Outturn, England data publication.