To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what assessment he has made of the effect of mid-year reductions in local authority budgets on contracts with the voluntary and charitable sector.

The contribution which local authorities are being asked to make this year to enable the Government to take immediate action to tackle the United Kingdom's unprecedented deficit should not impact on the delivery of essential front-line services. It will be for individual councils to make decisions about where savings are found. We have retained formula grant funding at the level approved by Parliament for 2010-11 (£29 billion), and have also gone further by lifting restrictions on how local government spends its money, by de-ringfencing more grants. This gives councils the maximum flexibility to focus budgets on those services which local people most want to see.