§ Mr. CousinsTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions if he will base SSA in respect of the flood defence levy on actual payments requested in 2002–03. [19485]
§ Dr. WhiteheadAn authority's SSA for flood defence is based on expenditure, including levies, from past years. This is subject to scaling back to match the agreed national SSA total for flood defence.
The Government have announced that although we review local government finance, we will not be making any changes to the SSA methodology until 2003–04. We will, however, be consulting soon on options arising from the separate DEFRA-led review of financial and administrative arrangements for flood defence, which may affect SSAs from that date.