Communities secretary James Brokenshire has disputed claims that the Fair Funding Review will transfer money from poor inner city areas to counties.
Brokenshire was responding in the House of Commons to a question by Labour MP, and chair of the housing, communities and local government Clive Betts.
Betts asked the minister: “Will he confirm that the consultation proposed in December to take deprivation out of the foundation element of the funding review?
“That would transfer money from deprived areas to non-deprived areas.
“Is that fair?”
In response, Brokenshire said: “Obviously we will look at all the representations that continue to be made during the review of relative needs and resources, but our analysis in the review demonstrates that, overall, population is by far the most important cost driver for both the upper-tier and lower-tier foundation formulae.”
He said that, while in aggregate terms deprivation is not shown to be a major cost driver for the services included in the foundation formulae, “I am of the view that relative levels of deprivation remain an important cost driver for some specific service areas such as social care.”
