Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will allocate funding to support rural communities with (a) infrastructure and (b) service delivery costs in the Autumn Budget 2025.

This Government is committed to improving the quality of life for people living and working in rural areas, so that we can realise the full potential of rural business and communities.

Rural communities make an important contribution to the UK economy and in 2023, rural areas contributed £259 billion to England’s Gross Value Added (GVA), representing 12.2% of the total GVA for England.

The Government recognises the additional challenges they face with respect to infrastructure resilience and essential service delivery, and Defra works across government to ensure that these factors are appropriately reflected when funding decisions are made.

In June, departmental budgets across Government were set up to 2029/30.