The welfare cap
Since 2014 the UK government has had a cap on welfare spending. Here we explain how the cap is set and assessed. We also look at how the cap has changed.

A briefing on the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for 2019-20 for England.
Local Government Finance Settlement 2019-20 (1 MB , PDF)
The provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for 2019-20 was published on 13 December 2018, with an oral statement and questions in the House of Commons on the same day.
The provisional settlement documentation includes details of allocations of grant funding to local authorities for the 2019-20 financial year. For that year, it also includes details of business rate retention pilots; proposed council tax referendum principles; and policy decisions on the New Homes Bonus, ‘negative Revenue Support Grant’, and grants for social care.
The final settlement figures for individual local authorities were published on 29 January 2019.
The motion for the final settlement documentation is on Tuesday 5 February 2019.
Two additional consultation papers were published alongside the provisional settlement documentation. These are Business Rates Retention Reform and A review of local authorities’ relative needs and resources. The former addresses the new system of 75% business rate retention, expected to be introduced in 2020-21. The latter concerns the ‘Fair Funding Review’, also expected to take effect from 2020-21. Details of these papers can be found in the Library briefing paper Reviewing and reforming local government finance.
Local Government Finance Settlement 2019-20 (1 MB , PDF)
Since 2014 the UK government has had a cap on welfare spending. Here we explain how the cap is set and assessed. We also look at how the cap has changed.
Since the 1990s, UK governments have had debt and borrowing targets. Here we look at the UK's fiscal targets and wider policy for managing the public finances.
Following the Spring Budget 2023 the Finance (No.2) Bill 2022-23 was published on 23 March 2023.