Health, defence and schools were the big winners in the Spending Review, but Whitehall claimed it would put local government back on a 'sustainable footing'.

Treasury documents revealed there will be an additional £3.4bn of grant funding to the sector in 2028-29 compared to 2024-25, a real terms increase in core spending of 3.1% across the Spending Review period.

While plans to update local government funding mechanisms have yet to materialise, the Spending Review documents reiterate Government commitments to multi-year settlements, to simplify funding, target cash to places that 'need it most' and allocate money ‘in a way that empowers local leaders to deliver against local priorities'.

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner secured extra funding for housing as the Government's ambition to build a further 1.5 million homes looked increasingly unlikely.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves described the move as the 'biggest cash injection into social and affordable housing in the past decade'.

Alongside cash for the NHS, Reeves vowed to improve pay for social care workers.

She pledged to ‘end the costly use of asylum hotels', with £200m funding to transform the asylum system and clear the backlog, reducing costs by £1bn a year by 2028-29, ending the previous Government's policy of  ‘shunting the cost of failure on local communities'.  

There was funding for 350 of the country's most deprived communities, including money for parks, libraries and to clean up graffiti in a fund similar to the Conservative's Levelling Up Fund.

And the chancellor pledged to boost jobs and economic growth, using defence and green energy investments to improve areas across the country. 

There were plans for £1.2bn a year to boost skills and jobs for young people.

An expected review of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities failed to materialise in the chancellor's speech, but Spending Review documents revealed it will be in the schools bill expected in the autumn.

A 10-year infrastructure strategy and industrial strategy will also follow later, but Reeves did publish the expected review of the Green Book in an effort to ‘make sure no region has Treasury guidance wielded against them'.

There was a raft of spending on transport, including plans to take forward Northern Powerhouse Rail, expand east-west rail, link up the Oxford Cambridge arc and improve the Midlands rail hub.

Citing the Cabinet Office's moves towards public service reform, Reeves vowed to ‘relentlessly' cut waste ‘with every single penny reinvested in public services'.

Read more here: 

£39bn funding boost for social and affordable housing

Silence on SEND reforms

Green Book reforms revealed

Reeves backs fair pay agreement