Local Authority Finance: Central Government Funding (FIN_07_50)

Summary

The Central Government Funding indicator describes the amount of various grants, income and transfers that Local Authorities receive directly from Central Government since 2002. Central Government transfers, together with council tax, make up the greater part of the available funding a Local Authority has in order to provide services and balance its net current expenditure.

Technical description

The Central Government funding indicator was compiled from annual revenue outturn estimates of Local Authority (LA) revenue expenditure and financing. The indicator includes several types of funding, mainly: a) Special and specific Grants within Aggregate External Finance (AEF), b) Grants outside AEF, c) Area Based Grants (ABG) (from 2008/2009 until 2010/2011) or Local Services Support Grant (LSSG) (from 2011/2012 onwards), d) Revenue Support Grant (RSG), e) Police Grant and f) Redistributed non-domestic rates or Retained income from Rate Retention Scheme. Note that this list of government funding is not exhaustive, and that there are other types of Central Government funding available to Local Authorities, such as appropriations from various funding reserves, albeit minor. In this sense, the Total value does not reflect the total amount of Central Government funding to Local Authorities but can be used as a good approximation. Values are expressed in thousands (£) and presented on the basis of financial years, i.e. from April 1st to March 31st. Values have been referenced (distributed) to Lower Tier LA geography (FIN_07_50L) and Upper Tier LA geography (FIN_07_50U). Figures from historic LA geography have been referenced to the 2018 LA geography. This includes changes in name/codes, merges, or splits of old LAs to new LAs based on population ratios for that year. The Total Central Government Transfers is expressed as the total amount as well as per capita, for direct comparisons. However, annual figures were not adjusted for inflation.