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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will reinstate the Rural Services Delivery Grant in the next local government financial settlement for Shropshire.

The government is absolutely committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. However, the Rural Services Delivery Grant did 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 25-26 Settlement will deliver on our commitment by ensuring that 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.

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.