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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council to meet demand for adult social care, children’s services and temporary accommodation.

For Stockon-on-Tees, the Settlement will make available £280.2 million in Core Spending Power by 2028-29, an above average increase of 29.3% since 2024-25, equivalent to £63.5 million.

The government is making good on long overdue promises to fundamentally update the way we fund local authorities. We are delivering fairer funding, targeting money where it is needed most through the first multi-year Settlement in a decade. As a result of the fair funding review reforms, nine in ten councils will receive funding that broadly matches their assessed relative need by the end of the multi-year Settlement, up from around a third before our reforms.

In the Rewiring the State Cabinet Statement, the government committed to taking forward a programme of reform to support the financial sustainability of local authorities. This includes increasing the share of business rates retained by regional and local government to 100% by the end of the decade to give local leaders greater control and certainty over their budgets, along with the ongoing and future reforms to the demand-led services placing the greatest pressure on council budgets: adult and children’s social care, homelessness, and special educational needs and disabilities.