Capital funding is provided through a combination of locally managed operational capital and national capital programmes. Within their capital allocations, Integrated care boards are responsible for prioritising investment locally, working with partnered National Health Service trusts to determine which schemes should be taken forward first.

There is no single national timetable for decisions on individual local schemes. Funding decisions for critical care infrastructure projects in Birmingham and North Solihull will be driven by the national capital settlement and the Department’s business planning, and then by the annual NHS planning cycle, which is when systems submit plans setting out proposed use of funding and demonstrate affordability.

In practice, decisions on the release of funding for specific schemes depend on the maturity of proposals, including business case readiness, and whether they can be shown to be affordable within agreed plans.

Decisions on future capital funding beyond existing allocations will be considered through the usual planning and spending review processes.

The government is committed to introducing free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary-aged pupils. The Autumn Budget 2024 confirmed over £30 million of funding for breakfast clubs for the 2025/26 financial year. This funding will enable us to fund up to 750 early adopters of the new breakfast clubs. Decisions about future funding for breakfast clubs will be taken as part of the next phase of the spending review.

All schools will receive £500 to cover initial set up costs and a lump sum of at least £1,000 per term, regardless of how many pupils are in attendance.

Schools will then receive a payment in arrears each term based on the number of pupils who accessed the club and the characteristics of pupils.

For the summer term this means there will be two payments. An initial fixed payment will be made to schools at the end of April 2025 for local authority maintained schools and at the beginning of May 2025 for academies. This will include the initial set up and lump sum payment. An arrears payment will be made to schools between October and December 2025, to cover the costs of running the breakfast club in the summer term 2025 (58 days).

The recently published Impact Assessment estimates the number of workers who will be affected by the increases in the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage, broken down by region and country. More granular estimates by local authority and parliamentary constituency are subject to greater data reliability issues due to survey response rates.

A full-time worker earning the National Living Wage will see their gross annual earnings rise by £1,400 per year. A full-time worker earning the 18-20 National Minimum Wage will see their gross annual earnings rise by £2,500 per year.

The number of pensioners in receipt of the State Pension in each (a) local authority and (b) parliamentary constituency in (i) Birmingham and (ii) Solihull are provided in the following tables. These figures are for the quarter ending August 2024 and are available at DWP Stat-Xplore.

(a) (i) - Birmingham

(a) (ii) - Solihull

(b) (i) - Birmingham

(b) (ii) - Solihull

In 2025/26, it is estimated the total State Pension expenditure will increase by around £9bn (in nominal terms). This estimation is available in the latest Benefit Expenditure and Caseload tables published at Autumn Budget 2024. Source: Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2024 - GOV.UK

The government is committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.

We will set out details of new investment to succeed the 2021-26 Affordable Homes Programme at the Spending Review.

This new investment will deliver a mix of homes for sub-market rent and homeownership, with a particular focus on delivering homes for Social Rent.

Core funding allocations for nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools are distributed through the dedicated schools grant (DSG).

Annual DSG allocations are published at local authority level. Allocations are not available by constituency, since local authorities are responsible for distributing the funding they receive locally through their own local formulae.

For mainstream schools, the DSG allocations show the total amount of funding each local authority receives. This is also split down into its constituent parts: per pupil funding for primary and secondary pupils respectively, premises funding, and growth funding.

For early years, the DSG allocations show the total amount of funding each local authority receives through the early years block. The early years block comprises of funding for each of the early years entitlements, as well as additional funding for early years pupil premium, disability access fund and maintained nursery school supplementary funding. The early years block comprises of funding for each of the early years entitlements, as well as additional funding for early years pupil premium, disability access fund and maintained nursery school supplementary funding. Early years allocations for the government funded entitlements are based on an hourly rate and the number of children taking up the entitlements. The hourly rates each local authority receives are calculated using the early years national funding formulae and are published annually. Further details on early years funding rates for 2025/26 financial year can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-funding-2025-to-2026.

The early years budget is demand led, and the early years block allocations in the DSG are adjusted based on census and headcount data according to the take-up of the entitlement hours.

The DSG publications for each year going back to 2020 can be found at the following addresses:

2025/26:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2025-to-2026.

2024/25:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2024-to-2025.

2023/24:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2023-to-2024.

2022/23:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2022-to-2023.

2021/22:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2021-to-2022.

2020/21:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2020-to-2021.

As part of the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement on 18 December 2024 the government published the latest Core Spending Power figures which are available here.

Included within the tables are figures for allocations dating back to 2015. Due to changes in the function and financing of local government, comparable data is not available prior to 2015-16.

Funding allocations from future settlements are subject to the outcome of future Spending Reviews. The government is committed to providing a multi-year funding settlement starting in 2026-27.

Since 2017, Sport England’s Birmingham and Solihull Local Delivery Pilot has been delivered through The Active Wellbeing Society, the region’s Active Partnership, supporting over 600,000 older people, women, young families, BAME communities and children to enjoy the health, wellbeing, social and other benefits of being active.

Sport England is awarding £10,713,328 of National Lottery investment in the ‘Active Communities’ programme to promote being active across the region until 2024. Initiatives promoted by this programme include:

• Developing a network of community activity champions;

• A Birmingham Wellbeing panel and ‘The Crowd’ online platform launching this autumn;

• Social prescribing schemes with healthcare professionals that use local community sports facilities;

• Community activities including Active Streets, Active Parks, the Big Run and Walk Project and Big Bikes Birmingham;

• Schools-based programmes to increase participation in sport and activity ;

• The Share Shacks programme, offering places where people can borrow equipment that helps communities to play sport and be active, supported by additional bike repair services and community cafes; and

• Tactical Urbanism schemes, including ‘pop-up parks’, redeveloping disused land for community use and supporting low-traffic neighbourhoods.