§ Mrs. GillanTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister what impact changes in the local government formula grant will have on public services in(a) Chesham and Amersham and (b) Buckinghamshire. [85130]
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§ Mr. LeslieWe will announce the new system for distributing Formula Grant, including detailed grant allocations for individual authorities, at the time of the provisional local government finance settlement which will be on the 5 December, subject to parliamentary business. Once the Government has allocated its grant, decisions about budgets and services are primarily for local councils to make. However, we have already guaranteed that we will use grant "floors" to ensure that no authority will face a cut in grant next year on a like for like basis, and we hope to do better than that when we announce the actual floors and ceilings scheme as part of the provisional settlement.
£000 1995–96 1996–97 1997–98 1998–99 1999–2000 2000–01 2002–02 2002–03 Buckinghamshire county council1 Revenue funding Revenue support grant 166,086 157,855 102,116 1102,324 101,215 95,891 111,397 91,977 Redistributed business rates 118,192 134,972 91,922 96,628 105,481 119,630 117,618 128,319 Capital funding Basic credit approvals issued2 10,987 12,585 7,976 7,082 6,080 5,134 764 15,171 Chiltern district council Revenue funding Revenue support grant 834 571 730 309 160 0 188 0 Redistributed business rates 3,037 3,234 2,934 2,968 3,230 3,568 3,527 3,935 Capital funding Basic credit approvals issued3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 50 1 The area covered by Buckinghamshire county council decreased on 1 April 1997 when Milton Keynes became a unitary authority 2 In 2002–03 Buckinghamshire county council had a large transport annual capital guideline amounting to £12.3 million compared to a zero transport annual capital guideline in the previous year 3 Chiltern received zero basic credit approvals between 1995–96 and 2001–02 due to high levels of capital receipts. In 2002–03 a discretionary element was introduced I will write to the hon. Member shortly with information on funding provided to the authorities from other Office of the Deputy Prime Minister programmes.
No funding has been provided by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to Amersham Town council or Chesham Town council in any year since 1 January 1996.
Chesham Town council will, however, benefit from the grant of £30,000 per year towards best value costs that we announced in the local government White Paper "Strong Local Leadership—Quality Public Services". The Local Government Bill contains clauses to enable the Secretary of State to pay such a grant and, in advance of legislation, the Audit Commission has consulted on a proposal to provide about £10,000 of support to each best value parish and town council in 2002–03 by the waiving and reimbursing of recent audit fees. The outcome of the consultation exercise will be announced later this month.