Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the change was in central government funding for local authority children’s services between 1 April 2015 and 1 April 2018.
Funding for local government services, including children’s services, is set at Spending Review and made available through the Local Government Finance Settlement. This funding is largely unringfenced, enabling local authorities to target spending according to local needs. Local authorities used this flexibility to increase spending on children and young people’s services from £9 billion in 2015-16 to around £9.4 billion in 2017-18.