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 make an estimate of the impact of the provision of council services in rural areas on the cost of those services in (a) North Dorset constituency and (b) other rural areas.

The government is absolutely committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. Places with a significant rural population will on average receive almost a 6% increase in their Core Spending Power (CSP) 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.

For Dorset Council this represents an increase of 5.9% in CSP - making available a total of up to £451.1 million in 2025-26.

The government is currently inviting views on how best to consider the impact of rurality on the costs of service delivery, and demand, as part of our longer-term consultation on local authority funding reform. Within this, we propose continuing to apply Area Cost Adjustments to account for relative cost differences between local authorities, including differences between rural and urban areas.