Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to ensure that funding allocations for local authority children’s services account for (a) geographical differences in deprivation and (b) levels of need.
The 2021-22 Local Government Finance Settlement provided £1.7 billion in Social Care Grant, which will support local authorities to provide care to vulnerable children, children in care, looked after children, and children with disabilities. Councils are also free to use any un-ringfenced funding, including their annual core settlement allocation, to support local priorities, such as Children's Social Care
This Government is committed to putting funding where there is relative need. Both Social Care Grant and the core settlement are distributed through relative needs formulas, and these formulas take into account local levels of need and deprivation
We are also in the process of updating both the Adult and Children's needs formulas, and will work with councils on how best to use these new formulas in the future.