§ Mr. Ian BruceTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what proportion of the increases in education spending will be financed by(a) revenue support grant, (b) business rates, (c) council taxes and (d) reductions in other services for each of the next three years; and what estimate he has made of 683W the average cumulative increase in council tax over each of the next three years to pay for education spending increases. [51599]
§ Ms ArmstrongLocal authority spending is financed partly through Aggregate External Finance (AEF), which includes both redistributed non-domestic rates and revenue support grant, and partly through locally raised revenue, including council taxes. It is not possible to separate the financing of education from that of other services. We have provided for an average increase of 4.9 per cent. per year in Standard Spending Assessments (SSAs) overall. If local authorities increase their overall expenditure in line with the increases in SSA totals, council taxes would go up by 4.5 per cent. each year.