Documents to download

This page provides details on both funding and spending of local authorities in England. 

The main total we present here is “core spending power”, a government estimate of the amount of money that local authorities have available to take decisions. This includes general un-ringfenced funding (made up of Revenue Support Grant and retained business rates revenue), various other grants, and an estimate of the council tax that authorities could raise. It does not include grants that are passed straight through to recipients, such as the Dedicated Schools Grant. 

Open a printable version 

If you would like to access this information in an alternative format please email papers@parliament.uk and we will review your request. 

Notes

Several local authorities were restructured at various points over the time period covered by this dashboard, which can leave gaps in their funding and spending figures. Both the original councils and those that replaced them are included in the dashboard. Some spending figures are also missing where authorities did not submit spending data to the government. 

Funding figures are not provided for years before 2015/16. This is because data in these years is not directly comparable in monetary terms on a consistent basis, as local government responsibilities and funding changed regularly before this point. Data going back to 2010/11 can be downloaded here; the National Audit Office (NAO) has also produced a data visualisation going back this far that may be helpful. The long-term changes section of the “Previous settlements” page uses methodology similar to the NAO to produce percentage figures. 

Core spending power figures set out local authorities’ position under 50% business rates retention arrangements, which is the position that applies to most local authorities. Core spending power figures have not been amended to reflect authorities with bespoke ‘increased’ business rates retention arrangements (that is, above 50% retention arrangements). 

The overall spending figures given here are “total service expenditure”, which covers each local authority’s total spending on services financed through central government grants, council tax, business rates, and so on, less additional income from sales, fees, charges, and other sources. This does not include capital spending – that is, spending on assets that last, such as buildings or vehicles. The spending figures are much higher than those for core spending power, as the latter does not include some ring-fenced grants. 

Because the spending figures are net of income from sales, fees and charges, spending on particular services can sometimes be negative. 

Spending figures can also appear to change significantly over time when the responsibilities of local authorities change – for example, when schools become academies they are no longer funded by the local authority. 

Real-terms figures have been calculated using a smoothed GDP deflator in 2020/21, giving the same average annual growth in the deflator in each year between 2019/20 and 2021/22, to remove the distortions caused by pandemic-related factors. 

All figures here are for local authorities in England – different local government structures exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so the figures are not comparable. The best information on local authorities from the devolved administrations is available from their respective websites: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. 

Data updates

We aim to update aspects of this dashboard once a year, in line with data releases from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), but the data shown here may not be the latest available. MPs and their staff can contact the Commons Library with queries about updates. 

Sources

Documents to download

Related posts