Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 1 May 2018 to Question 138439 on Local Government Finance, which other determining factors his Department uses to determine the sustainability of local authorities on an (a) individual and (b) sectoral level.

As part of my Department's responsibility for the overall sustainability of the local government finance system, the Department assesses the total amount of funding available to local government to deliver statutory responsibilities. The Department assesses this both top-down, looking at a macro level to see how much funding is in the system as a whole when set against cost drivers, demographics and opportunities for efficiencies; and bottom-up looking at financial indicators, overall capacity, leadership and governance for individual authorities. The Department’s overall judgement also considers whether there is flexibility in the system to respond to events, emergencies and to be able to provide the broader local leadership expected by communities.

Each Government Department has responsibility for establishing arrangements to ensure that services for which they have policy responsibility remain sustainable and that statutory responsibilities are being met. Local authorities are independent of central Government and are responsible for managing their financial budgets and for making spending decisions in line with their priority needs.