It’s my intention that this post is the first in a series of pieces on setting Trafford’s 26/27 budget. One of the main motives for writing it is to get my own understanding of it up to speed. They say that the best form of learning is getting to a position where I can explain it. You’ll have gathered that I am not yet at that point.
So, a starting gun was fired on Wednesday 17th December 2025 with the Government’s publication of a library of documents and a statement to the House of Commons from Alison McGovern, Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government).
It takes just 90 seconds for the Minister to get to a key theme of this Labour Government’s approach to financing local government.
By breaking the link between funding and deprivation, the Tories punished poorer councils. Year after year, they exacerbated inequality. As a result, too many places in this country feel forgotten and left to fend for themselves…
…It is why, according to our analysis, whereas under the old system deprivation scores could account for only 25% of variation in per capita funding applications, under this settlement it is up to 75%, with other important factors such as coastline, miles of road or visitor numbers making up the rest.
So, we know that poorer councils will do better from this settlement than others and Trafford is not one of the poorest. As a Labour man, I totally support the intent. We will need to see whether Trafford is getting sufficient funding. That’s a process that will take us right through to setting the budget in March.
Resources
I’ll add to these as we proceed with budget setting but there’s already vital material online.
Government Publications (Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government – MHCLG)
- Local Government Finance Policy Statement this sets out the approach
- Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2026-2027 to 2028-2029 Collection
This collection brings together all documents relating to the provisional local government finance settlement for England 2026-2027 to 2028-2029. (and there’s a lot of documents)
Local Government Association Material
- LGA briefing A good summary and they’ll add more as we progress.
Institute for Financial Studies they’re putting some good analysis and comment out there throughout this process.
- Analysis of the Policy Statement (see above)
- Analysis of the provisional settlement (see above)
Featured Photo by RDNE Stock project: https://www.pexels.com/photo/marketing-exit-desk-notebook-7414218/
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