Local Government Finance: Tamworth

Mr. Jenkins
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (1) how much Tamworth borough council raised in council tax revenue in each of the last five years;

(2) how much Tamworth borough council received from central Government in cash terms in each of the last six years;

(3) what the ratio between central Government funding and council tax revenue for Tamworth borough council was in each of the last eight years.

Barbara Follett
The information requested on central Government grant in cash terms, the council tax requirement and the ratio between central Government grant and the council tax requirement in each of the last eight years is shown in the following table.

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|                                                                                          |Central Government grant (£000)|Council tax requirement (£000)|Ratio|
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|2001-02                                                                                   |4,973                          |2,055                         |2.42 |
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|2002-03                                                                                   |5,135                          |2,219                         |2.31 |
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|2003-04                                                                                   |6,137                          |2,383                         |2.58 |
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|2004-05                                                                                   |5,623                          |2,570                         |2.19 |
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|2005-06                                                                                   |6,523                          |2,726                         |2.39 |
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|2006-07                                                                                   |7,460                          |2,865                         |2.60 |
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|2007-08                                                                                   |7,615                          |3,040                         |2.50 |
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|2008-091                                                                                  |7,823                          |3,203                         |2.44 |
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|1 Provisional outturn,Source:Communities and local government revenue outturn (RO) returns|                               |                              |     |
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Local authority council tax requirement is the council tax available to finance revenue expenditure, not council tax collected.

Central Government grant is defined here as the sum of formula grant (revenue support grant and redistributed non-domestic rates) and specific grants inside aggregate external finance (AEF), i.e. revenue grants paid for council's core services. For 2008-09 it also includes area based grant (ABG).

Figures exclude grants outside AEF (i.e. where funding is not for authorities' core services, but is passed to a third party, for example, rent allowances and rebates), capital grants, funding for the local authorities’ housing management responsibilities and those grant programmes (such as European funding) where authorities are simply one of the recipients of funding paid towards an area.

Comparisons across years may not be valid owing to changing local authority responsibilities.