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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whether he informed local authorities that dedicated funding for local welfare assistance schemes would no longer be available from April 2015 before the publication of the provisional local government finance settlement; and if he will make a statement.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on 17 November, PQ 213988.

The consultation on how local welfare provision should be funded in 2015/16 closed on 21 November. The Government are analysing the responses, alongside the review by the Department for Work and Pensions into existing provision. The Government will make a decision based on this analysis in time for the provisional local government finance settlement in December 2014.