Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to assist rural councils that cannot access funding from the Rural Services Delivery Grant in order to ensure that the additional cost of delivery of services in rural areas is adequately resourced.

In setting the baseline in 2013-14, the Government took into account the additional costs of delivering services in rural areas. It increased the amount distributed through sparsity in the older people's social care need formula, and both the district and county-level environmental, protective and cultural services need formulae. In addition a separate sparsity element was introduced in the fire need formula.


The Government believes that all authorities have sufficient resources to deliver adequate services within their areas.