The Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for Nottinghamshire saw Rushcliffe Borough Council and Nottinghamshire County Council receive a Core Spending Power uplift of £235 million for essential local services between 2024/25 and 2028/29.
The multi-year settlement is expected to help councils plan ahead, rather than firefight from one year to the next as they’ve been doing since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nottinghamshire County Council has received a 30.1% increase in Core Spending Power for the period, excluding inflation, reflecting the types of services it delivers (adult social care, education, children’s services and highways among others). This is compared to an increase of only 7% for the County Council between 2015/16 and 2019/20.
The benefits for Borough and District Councils – which don’t have responsibility for the larger spending areas – are less pronounced, with the Core Spending Power of Rushcliffe Borough Council projected to rise by 4.6% between 2024/25 and 2028/29. Of Nottinghamshire’s seven district and borough councils, Rushcliffe is third for the increase to its Core Spending Power, and the increase compares favourably to the last multi-year settlement when Rushcliffe’s funding fell by 5% between 2015/16 and 2019/20.
Investments by the East Midlands Mayor, such as into the Trent Sports Quarter and the Trent Arc, are not included in the Local Government Finance Settlement.
So overall, the local government funding is looking better … BUT this doesn’t mean that the extra cost of delivering services in more remote rural areas is sufficiently recognised, which is why I’ve written to the minister to ask her to look especially at how grant money is being allocated.
