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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what mechanisms his Department plans to use to monitor the effectiveness of the multi-year Settlement in reducing disparities in funding between more and less deprived local authorities.

The government is making good on long overdue promises to fundamentally update the way we fund local authorities. We are realigning funding with need by introducing a fairer and evidence-based funding assessment, which will target a greater proportion of central government grant funding towards the most deprived places which need it the most. By 2028-29, we expect that the 10% most deprived authorities in England will see a significant increase in Core Spending Power per head compared to the least deprived.

The new assessment will be based on the most up-to-date data available. Going forwards, we will update the data at the beginning of each multi-year Settlement to balance dynamism with providing certainty and stability over the Settlement period.