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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the allocation of an additional £474 million of Government funding to local authorities in Staffordshire in response to the covid-19 outbreak, if he will publish (a) the expenditure of that funding by local authority area and (b) the budget headings under which that funding was so expended.

Councils are on the front line as we tackle this pandemic, and we have now made £3.2 billion available to local authorities through an un-ringfenced grant so they can address pressures in response to Covid-19.

It is important that we carefully monitor the pressures they are facing. Across both rounds of our Covid-19 financial monitoring survey we received data from every single authority asked. We are extremely grateful for their continued collaboration, which enables us to understand pressures at a national and local level. A summary of the data provided to us by councils in England will be available in due course.

We know from the first two rounds of monitoring that the majority of the money is being allocated to supporting those most vulnerable in society, as we would expect. Other service areas that money is being allocated to environmental costs (which includes death management) and housing which includes homelessness and rough sleeping.