Contribution
It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate. My very good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), warned earlier against pitting different parts of the UK against each other. At the risk of flying in the face of that advice and angering the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), I will just say that West Dorset is the most beautiful place to live.
My rural community shares a lot of the same difficulties as everyone else here. My constituents are spread across small towns and villages, so distances are longer, there are fewer service providers and councils have fewer opportunities to achieve economies of scale. Almost half of Dorset’s residents live in areas that are among the 20% most deprived nationally in access to services. Whether it is GPs, dentists, post offices, shops, primary schools, access is much more difficult than in urban areas. As has also been highlighted, waste collection is difficult, vehicles have to travel further, highways teams have to cover more miles, social care workers have to spend more time travelling with patients, and a child with special educational needs has to travel a larger distance to reach the right school.
At the same time, Dorset has one of the oldest populations in the country: 31% of residents are aged 65 or over. Although I have repeated it many a time, and it may well not be true, my favourite fact about West Dorset is that if we were a country, we would have the oldest population in the world—we would be older than Japan. That matters because an ageing population creates additional demand for adult social care and other council services.
The Government have increased funding for local government, which is welcome, but our councils are still dealing with years of financial pressures and cuts alongside inflation, demographic change, the national living wage and increased national insurance costs. That was compounded by the change in the fair funding review 2.0 to remove rurality from all grant formulas bar adult social care.
The cost of providing home-to-school transport for children with special educational needs has risen 33% since 2016-17. Dorset has the seventh highest weekly cost for children with SEND of any authority in England. Children can live a long way from the specialist provision they need, with fewer available capable specialist providers, and transport costs more. The same applies to adult social care. There are fewer providers willing to operate across rural areas because travelling between clients takes longer. Those providers that do operate in rural areas can charge more to cover the additional time and transport costs. The council has more roads to maintain, more miles to travel and more dispersed communities to serve. A funding formula that treats rural and urban areas the same does not produce a fair outcome, as has been highlighted.
In West Dorset, bus frequency has fallen by an astonishing 62% since 2010, and 10 of Dorset’s 14 towns have been identified as transport deserts or at serious risk of becoming one. Just over one in five people in large parts of rural Dorset cannot reach a town centre within 30 minutes by public transport, yet Dorset received just £3.8 million in the bus services improvement plan funding, compared with the £11.6 million allocated to our neighbours in Devon. The funding formula needs to recognise rurality, population age, visitor number increases and accessibility needs.
We also need to look at the future of Dorset and the wider Wessex region. Since 2025, Dorset council has been working with Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, Somerset council and Wiltshire council through the Wessex Partnership. Wessex has a population of almost 2 million people, and it already works together across areas including defence, clean energy, digital and life sciences. The partnership has developed a shared regional vision and is preparing to take on greater devolved responsibility.
The Government’s current devolution framework will create different levels of opportunity depending on which model an area achieves. It is estimated that mayoral strategic authority status could provide around £460 million in additional funding each year across the Wessex region, which is about £245 per resident, as well as an estimated £16 billion of additional economic output over 30 years. If other parts of the country receive powers, greater flexibility and greater funding, Wessex needs to be able to compete on a level playing field. I would ask that the Minister agrees to meet the Wessex Partnership to discuss devolution for Wessex.
If the Government want economic growth in every postcode, funding formulas need to recognise the real costs of rurality, ageing populations and providing services across large geographical areas. Rural communities should not receive less because delivering services simply costs them more.