Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department is providing assistance to local authorities to meet the demand for children’s services in rural areas around Coventry; and if he will make a statement.

The 2015 Spending Review made available more than £200 billion until 2020 for councils to deliver the local services their communities want to see, including children’s services. In February, Parliament confirmed the settlement for local government. This provided a £1.3 billion increase in resources to local government over the next two years.

Funding for children’s services is an un-ring-fenced part of the wider local government finance settlement, to give local authorities the flexibility to focus on locally determined priorities and, of course, their statutory responsibilities, including children’s social care. It is up to local authorities to decide how best to allocate their funds to meet the demand for children’s services in their local area.

In addition to core funding, the Department for Education has also committed almost £270 million since 2014 to help local authorities to innovate and reform services to achieve better quality and efficiency. The Innovation Programme is enabling local authorities across the country to develop, test and scale more effective and efficient approaches to supporting children and young people. Learning from the Innovation Programme is informing the new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, whose early priorities include improving the evidence of what works in reducing the need for children to enter care.

We recognise that funding pressures on local authorities may be greater in some parts of the country than in others so we are working alongside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the sector to review current funding distributions as part of the government’s fair funding review of relative needs and resources.