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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she is taking steps to ensure that local authorities in rural areas receive higher levels of funding in the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26, in the context of her Department's plans to repurpose funding allocated for the Rural Services Delivery Grant.

The government is absolutely committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. Places with a significant rural population will on average receive around a 5% increase in their Core Spending Power next year, which is a real terms increase. No council will see a reduction – and new funding will be available to rural areas in 2025-26 through guaranteed EPR payments.

The Rural Services Delivery Grant does not properly account for need and a large number of predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it – that’s clearly not right and a sign we need to allocate funding more effectively. The government is keen to hear from councils about how best to consider the impact of rurality on the costs of service delivery, and demand, as part of our longer term consultations on local authority funding reform.