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Ahead of the budget next week, Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer has written to the Chancellor, John Healey, to ask him to address a stark unfairness in the Local Government Finance Settlement that has left Bristol £1221 worse off per person than the average large city in England.
As a result of this gap in funding, Bristol City Council is struggling to provide essential local services and has been forced to rely on local business rates and council tax to make up the shortfall – leaving the hard-working residents and business owners in Bristol doubly worse off.
In her letter, Carla echoed the council’s request to increase this funding by at least £80 per person to bring Bristol closer to the national average and better able to provide for all its residents.
You can read the full letter on Carla’s website here and see her social media post about it here.
Carla Denyer MP said:
“Essential council services in Bristol are struggling because we have one of the lowest levels of government core funding per person of any large city in England.
“This in turn means Bristol depends more on Council Tax and locally retained rates – punishing the working people of Bristol for unfairness coming from London.
“The PM might talk about growth in every postcode, but we need action.
“That’s why I’ve written to the Chancellor to echo Bristol City Council’s request for at least £80 per person more of core funding to help right this obvious wrong.”
Notes to Editors:
[1] The £122 per person gap is calculated using the December 2025 provisional Core Spending Power tables. This was updated in February 2026 to the Core Spending Power Final local government finance settlement, which showed the gap between the average core funding and Bristol’s core funding had since widened to £128 per person.
Based on this final settlement, Bristol is expected to have the second-lowest core spending power overall of England’s core cities in 2026/27, and the lowest central government funding (at about £598 per person). Bristol is also expected to raise more funding in council tax (about £630 per person) than any other core city in England.