§ Sir Nicholas WintertonTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister how many representations he has received from residents of(a) Cheshire and (b) Macclesfield constituency registering their response to his Department's review of revenue grant distribution; when he expects to announce his decision following his Department's consultation; and if he will make a statement. [79273]
§ Mr. RaynsfordThe Government have received around 55,000 letters from the public relating to the Formula Grant Review, the great majority being as the result of various campaigns that have been organised. One of these campaigns was based in Cheshire, and we estimate that around 200 responses were received as part of that. Cheshire is also one of the constituent214W authorities of the F40 education funding campaign, and a proportion of the approximately 53,000 responses received as part of that originated from within the country.
We do not record the details of the senders of campaign letters as a matter of course. For this reason, and since very many from the F40 campaign are multiple copies of the same letter sent by the same people to different Ministers, it is not possible to provide a more precise answer, or one for the constituency of Macclesfield, except at disproportionate cost.
We are currently taking decisions on the new system to replace SSAs. As we do so we are carefully considering the full range of evidence, pressures and points that have been put to us. We will announce our proposals for the new system to Parliament at the time of the next provisional local government finance settlement, which we expect to be around the beginning of December.