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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of their formula funding of student accommodation to support local authorities in the absence of council tax or business rate income, and of whether this formula should be updated to reflect the increased numbers of students using local services over the past decade.

The Government has recently published the Fair Funding Review 2.0 consultation document setting out detailed proposals to update and reform the local government funding system through the 2026–27 Local Government Finance Settlement. As part of these proposals, we are considering how best to reflect the impact of student populations on local authorities’ ability to generate council tax revenue.

Specifically, we are proposing to account for the presence of student-exempt properties within the Resource Adjustment element of the funding formula. This would mean that authorities with a higher number of student-exempt properties would receive a smaller resource adjustment, thereby recognising their reduced capacity to generate income locally through council tax.