Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance) supported by Ian Trisk-Grove (Service Director for Finance) introduced the report and highlighted the following points:

a)    Two consultations had been announced on 20 June 2025 by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government;

b)    The ‘Fairer Funding’ review aimed to create a simpler, fairer and more transparent funding that better reflected the current needs, costs and resources of the local area. This was initiated to address an imbalance in  funding allocations created under the previous government; 

c)    Plymouth had a low Council Tax base, with a large proportion of houses in the A, B or C bracket. Other areas had higher bases, attracting higher revenue. It was hoped that the consultation would lead to a fairer allocation of the funds to help meet the needs of the city and its residents;

d)    The consultation ran for a period of eight weeks, up until 15 August 2025;

e)    Plymouth City Council’s response to the consultation would be brought to Cabinet for awareness;

f)     The second consultation related to Council Tax, and ran for twelve weeks, from 12 September 2025;

g)    The second consultation aimed to improve the ease of paying Council Tax. This included proposals to move payments from 10 to 12 month cycles by default, enabling people to pay over a longer period of time, and improving transparency of how the monies were spent. Proposals also included changing entitlements to increase eligibility for Council Tax discounts, improving the ability for residents to challenge their Council Tax banding, and enabling the application of fairer and more flexible repayment systems;

h)    The consultations were welcomed, and were hoped to bring long-overdue reform;

i)     Cumulatively, the Council had lost approximately three quarters of £1 billion since 2010;

j)     It was important that funding allocations reflected Council Tax bases, and recognised issues such as deprivation, inequality and service demand. The new formula would take account of residents who required services but did not pay Council Tax, including students and service personnel;

k)    It was important to properly consider the proposals to ensure there were no unintended implications, and for Plymouth to feed back their support and reservations where required;

l)     Plymouth City Council were working with experts to model the proposed funding formulas prior to feeding back on the consultation;

m)  The multi-year settlement had now been confirmed (3 year). Transitional arrangements would be required in the interim period;

n)    The Government had announced plans to consolidate grants, aiming to increase transparency and streamline the process; Each year the local authority received nearly 300 separate grants;

o)    The plan set out 4 grants for initial consolidation: Homelessness, Public Health, Crisis Resilience and Children’s Services;

p)    Post Local Government Reorganisation, there would be a smaller number of Unitary Authorities driving economic growth however, economic growth was not a statutory function. Combined Authorities alone could not drive economic growth;

q)    The Leader requested that the Service Director and Cabinet Member for Finance utilise their networks to ensure funding for economic growth was considered, and understand how the Government would resource it. There was an opportunity to include growth as an additional (5^th) funding pot.

The Cabinet agreed to:

1.    Note the report;

2.    Receive an update report at the next Cabinet meeting to outline progress.