Local Authorities: Long-term Funding

6. What discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on long-term funding for local authorities.

The Chancellor, his Ministers and his officials are in regular contact with the Secretary of State, me and departmental officials on matters pertaining to local government finance. The final local government finance settlement for this financial year, 2023-24, makes available up to £60 billion for local government in England.

Local authorities have lost £15 billion of funding since 2010, as the Government have sought to outsource both the pain and the blame for their punishing approach to the public finances, with only a fraction allocated back on a piecemeal, time-limited and ad hoc basis. The reality for local authorities up and down the country is that it is increasingly becoming far too difficult to deliver all the services that local residents rely on. When will the Secretary of State stop treating local government like a pawn in his political games, and start treating local government finance with the seriousness that both residents and hard-working local government officials need?

Difficult decisions were taken in the years after 2010 precisely because Labour failed to make those decisions in the years before 2010. One of the reasons why we have made available additional funding for local government in this financial year is to demonstrate that we understand the challenges local authorities face. Ultimately, however, as I said to the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), this sort of issue requires hard choices and trade-offs—something the Labour party continues to fail to demonstrate it understands.

As inflation impacts on local authority budgets, planning departments are becoming especially squeezed. Councils are meant to approve big planning applications within 13 weeks, but over the last year only 19% have been approved in that timeframe, down from 57% ten years ago. What can the Minister do to improve funding for local council planning departments?

My hon. Friend highlights an important place where further progress is needed. We recognise that there are challenges in this area, and I know that the Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), who is the Housing Minister, and the Secretary of State are well aware of these challenges and seeking to address them. My portfolio includes nationally significant infrastructure programmes, and we have brought forward the NSIP action plan, demonstrating our commitment to speed up projects and decisions within them as much as we can.

Shropshire’s Conservative-run council is trying to save £1 million a week just to balance its budget this year and restore its reserves to a safe level. Part of its problem is that the funding allocated to rural councils does not reflect the additional cost of delivering services in rural places. Will the Minister consider reassessing that allocation, so that rural councils can get the revenue they need to support the cost of the services they need to provide?

We are absolutely aware of the challenges that rural councils face. That is one of the reasons why we increased the rural grant within the most recent financial settlement by £10 million. Where there are pressures in local government finance in the coming years, we will continue to work with colleagues across the House to address them.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council is facing unprecedented pressure, particularly because there are now over 1,000 children in the care of the city council, as well as multiple education, health and care plans that require children to be taken out of the city to find the provision that they deserve. Will my hon. Friend meet urgently with the leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Councillor Jane Ashworth; its chief executive officer, Jon Rouse; and Members of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent to quickly find a way forward and ensure that our finances are in the best possible position going forward?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who speaks with knowledge and experience on these issues. I would be happy to meet Members of Parliament from Stoke-on-Trent to talk about this matter in further detail.