Contact: Jon Pittam, ext 7400

1 Summary

1.1 The Government has issued an amending Revenue Support Grant report (RSG) for 2003/04. Despite this Council's representations to Government at consultation the Government has decided to go ahead and make retrospective adjustments which benefit London, the North East and North West.

1.2 All classes of authority gain or have no changes except shire counties and shire police authorities. The largest gainers are Manchester (£7.9m) and Lambeth (£2.8m).

1.3 Hampshire loses £1.7m from its formula spending share (FSS) for 2003/04, but because of the operation of the grant floor, there is only a marginal loss of grant of £5,000.

1.4 The amending report for 2004/05 has been postponed until next year `to ensure that all possible revisions to the data used in the 2004/05 settlement will be included'. This will affect the grant receivable in respect of 2004/05 and because the Council will no longer be protected from the general grant floor arrangements in that year, so that some contingency provision will need to be retained in the grant equalisation reserve.

2 Background

2.1 These adjustments reflect the errors made by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) following the publication of the 2001 census on population figures used in grant entitlements. Mid year estimates for 2001 were issued by ONS in September 2004. These are now being applied to 2003/04 grant entitlements (and will be for 2004/05).

2.2 However the Government, despite representations from this Council and other counties, has deliberately chosen not to update figures from the 1991 to 2001 census for other factors which would result in more RSG and grant flowing to the Council and other shire counties, especially those in the south-east. Cabinet has considered these issues previously and it appears that the Council remains locked in a `heads they win, tails we lose' syndrome when responding to consultations on data changes from the census results.

Recommendations

The recommendations are contained in the decision sheet summary which precedes the main report.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB the list excludes:

1 Published works.

2 Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

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