§ The Earl of Kimberleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
What guidance they give to local authorities in the allocation of their budgets and whether the same proportion is expected to be allocated to the relevant areas each year or whether a decision is made annually on how to allocate available funds.
§ The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Viscount Ullswater)Local authorities are free to determine their spending priorities between services, so long as they operate within statutory requirements. The Government determines a Standard Spending Assessment (SSA) for each local authority for each financial year. The SSA is built up from formulae relating to each of their main services. These formulae are reviewed each year. But there is no presumption that an authority's budget for a particular service should correspond to the portion of its Standard Spending Assessment calculated in relation to that service.