§ 83. Mr. Millanasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs if he will state 159W the formula used for calculating weighted population for local authorities for the purposes of rate-deficiency grants.
§ Sir K. JosephThe formula is in subsection (4) of Section 5 of the Local Government Act, 1958. This requires that "… in ascertaining the standard penny rate product for a county or county borough the population of any county in the case of which the ratio of the population to the road-mileage of the county is less than seventy shall be taken to be increased by two-fifths of the additional population needed in order that the population divided by the road-mileage should be seventy".
§ 84. Mr. Millanasked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs how total Exchequer rate-deficiency grants for England and Wales are calculated.
§ Sir K. JosephThe total is simply the aggregate of the individual grants. Broadly, grant is paid to every local authority in whose area the product per head of population of a rate of a penny in the £ falls short of the national average. The deficiency is expressed as a percentage of the national average and the grant to the authority is that proportion of so much of the authority's expenditure as would otherwise fall on the rates.