PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(16 December 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to her Department's press release entitled Council funding to be overhauled to deliver better outcomes, published on 28 November 2024, what methodology her Department will use to measure (a) the impact of rurality and (b) levels of (i) demand and (ii) deprivation to calculate the funding to replace the Rural Services Delivery Grant.

Asked by:
Ian Roome (Liberal Democrat)

The government is committed to tackling the issues that matter to rural communities. Places with a significant rural population will on average receive around a 5% increase in their Core Spending Power next year, a real terms increase.

The Rural Services Delivery Grant (RSDG) seen in previous Local Government Finance Settlements does not properly account for need and a large number of predominantly rural councils receive nothing from it – a sign we need to allocate funding more effectively. We are currently consulting on local government funding reform from 2026-27 onwards and we are keen to hear from councils on the impact of rurality on the costs of service delivery, and demand.

For 2025-26, the RSDG has been repurposed alongside a number of other grants to form the Recovery Grant, although this is not a direct replacement. The Recovery Grant will go to places where, weighted by population, deprivation outweighs council tax raising ability. This is explained fully in our accompanying methodology note.

Answered by:
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1 January 1970