Financial Pressures on Local Authorities in North Wales

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 10 October 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:03, 10 October 2018

Dirprwy Lywydd, the Member really should withdraw her accusation that the funding formula for local government in Wales is somehow tribal in nature. She knows that it is not. The funding formula is agreed every year with local government. I sat in the finance subgroup, where local authority leaders—[Interruption.]—no, no, local authority leaders agreed on the latest set of changes to the formula. By and large, those changes were ones that favoured more rural parts of Wales because they added an additional increment to the recognition of sparsity in the way that the formula operates. Welsh Government does not set the formula. It is set on expert advice and it is agreed by local government. The reason why Conwy has found a decrease in funding this year is because it has fewer people unemployed in its area than it did this time last year, it has fewer secondary school pupils than it did this time last year, and it has fewer children claiming free school meals in its primary schools. There is nothing tribal about any one of those factors. They are all empirical measures, they feed their way into the formula, and, every year, some local authorities see a benefit and some local authorities find that they are less so, and Conwy council is no doubt grateful for the fact that, in order to help that council address the changes in the formula, the Welsh Government will provide £513,000 more in funding to that council next year—not as they do where you are in charge, by taking money from some councils and giving it to others, but through central funding that this Government provides to provide the funding floor.