By Lucy Phillips
22 March 2011
A new funding mechanism has been created for grants that could not be rolled into the simplified local government formula grant for 2011/12.
Officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government today wrote to all local authority chief finance officers outlining details of the new Local Services Support Grant.
The un-ringfenced payment includes funding from other departments, such as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office, as well as the DCLG.
It includes the government’s ‘transition grant’, which will limit the reduction in revenue spending power for individual councils to 8.8% in the coming financial year.
Today’s letter follows the 2011/12 Local Government Finance Settlement, published on January 31, which began the process of rolling in about £4bn of grants into one ‘unhypothecated’ formula grant. By 2014/15, the number of core separate grants for local government will fall from more than 90 to fewer than ten.
Individual council allocations under the Local Services Support Grant will be published in April and then made through monthly payments.
