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Standard Spending Assessments

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Alternative Resource Allocation Models for Local Service in Wales

This report has been commissioned as part of the Welsh Government’s response to the School Funding Committee and investigates alternative approaches to funding formula.

Green Book 2013-14

The Green Book provides background information for the calculation of Standard Spending Assessments for the annual local government revenue settlement.
Standard Spending Assessments (SSA) are notional calculations of what each Council needs to spend to provide a standard level of service.

They are an important part of the formula for distributing Revenue Support Grant to local authorities and are calculated to reflect the differing costs of providing services in each authority area because of their different demographic, physical, economic and social characteristics.

A total SSA is calculated for each local authority and is built up from component parts for each service the authority provides, such as education or social services. The SSA calculation is broken down between the different services provided by local authorities. These different elements are called service Indicator-Based Assessments (IBAs).  An authority's IBA is not a spending target.  It is for each local authority to determine its own spending priorities from it's overall funding allocation and what it can raise from council tax. 

Each IBA has its own distribution formula, which uses objective indicators to distribute the IBA between local authorities.  The primary and secondary education IBAs use pupil numbers and measures of deprivation and sparsity to distribute funding. The individual service IBAs for an authority are then added together to give the total SSA for that local authority.

The Bramley Review

Concerns about basing distribution of the local government settlement on historic costs of providing education services were explored by the Committee on School Funding in 2006.  A report was commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government as part of its response to the School Funding Committee which investigated alternative approaches for funding formulae.  The results of Professor Bramley of Heriot-Watt University's review of the methodology used to distribute resources for education in the settlement, published in November 2007, presented an alternative methodology that focussed on outcomes.  It explored the link between deprivation and pupil attainment.  More detailed consideration of the study's findings will be taken forward through the Distribution Sub-Group.  Education officials and other practitioners will be fully involved in that work.

Green Book

The Green Book is a statistical companion to the Local Government Finance Report. It provides background information for the calculation of Standard Spending Assessments for the annual local government revenue settlement.