Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether there is any Barnett Consequential for Northern Ireland from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund; and how much that allocation will be.

Spending Review 2021 allocated £800m for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, as part of the UK government’s 10-year £3.8 billion Manifesto commitment to decarbonise the social housing building stock in England.

At spending reviews, the Barnett formula is applied to changes in each UK government department’s DEL budget with the Barnett consequentials that arise then added to the devolved administrations’ baseline block grants.

Because the Barnett formula is not applied to changes in funding for all the individual programmes within a UK government department’s DEL budget, the Barnett consequentials associated with these individual programmes cannot be identified.

Spending Review 2021 set the largest annual block grants, in real terms, of any spending review settlement since the devolution Acts in 1998 and the Northern Ireland Executive is receiving an average of £1.6 billion per year through the Barnett formula on top of its £13.4 billion annual baseline.

It is for the devolved administrations to decide how to allocate their funding in devolved areas, including environmental planning and decarbonisation.