Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps she is taking to ensure local government settlements take due account of levels of social deprivation.

The government is taking immediate action to begin addressing the significant challenges facing local government by ensuring that funding goes to the places that need it most in 2025-26.

We are directing funding towards areas with greater need and demand for services (we have used deprivation as a proxy for this), and less ability to raise income locally, through the new £600 million Recovery Grant.

This will start to correct the unfairness of the current system by putting councils in the areas with greater need and demand for services on a more stable footing. This grant marks the first meaningful step towards preparing for reform that has been taken in over a decade.