Issue - meetings

Background:

This report provided Cabinet with details of the provisional Local Government settlement announced by Government on 19 December 2012.

The settlement covered the concluding 2-year period of the Spending Review 2010 and was the first settlement under the new arrangement for business rates which would come into place on 1 April 2013.

It was noted that the overall settlement figure, as announced as the ‘Start-up Funding Assessment’, was £1.906 million better than that forecast in the draft budget report for 2013/2014, and £0.963 million better than the forecast for 2014/2015. This excluded grants such as the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and other Department for Education (DfE) schools based grants, Public Health Grant, New Homes Bonus, Adult Learning and a number of more minor grants.

Reasons:

These provisional levels of grant form a fundamental component of the 2013/14 budget, and their announcement is a further stage in the process of preparing a balanced budget.