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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what estimate his Department has made of the additional costs that will be incurred by local authorities as a result of having to take safety precautions in order to hold local elections during the covid-19 outbreak.

The costs of delivering local elections are met by local authorities. We recognise that delivering local authority services, including elections, safely in the context of the pandemic, will increase costs. We have allocated to councils in England a further £1.55 billion non-ringfenced grant for Covid-19 expenditure pressures and made clear that priorities for use of that funding include additional local election costs as a result of Covid-19.