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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the allocation of the transitional grant to those local authority areas that are in greatest need, and on what basis those needs were assessed.

The local government finance settlement distributed revenue support grant by looking at the main resources that are available to local councils. The Local Government Finance Report (England) 2016/2017 sets out the basis of this distribution and the results can be found (attached) on the government website at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2016-to-2017.

Transition Grant is for places that did not benefit from these changes in the formula. I refer the noble Lord to the debate on the Local Government Finance (England) on 10 February 2016, Official Report, Columns 1643 and 1645 (attached). The fund will be applied in direct proportion to the difference in the revenue support grant that would have been experienced and so it will ease the change from a system based on central Government grant to one in which local sources determine a council’s revenue.