Kent County Council Funding Explained: Why the “£50m Boost” and “£127m Increase” Are Both True (Fair Funding vs Core Spending Power)

If you ever want to start a festive row in a Kent WhatsApp group, don’t mention politics. Mention “extra government funding” — and then watch three people produce three numbers, each with the confidence of a man reading out lottery results.

That’s exactly what happened here:

• one headline (and plenty of local chatter) talks about “more than £50 million” extra for Kent, 

• while the Government’s own headline measure suggests Kent’s resources rise by about £127 million next year (and nearly £1.9 billion by 2028/29). 

So which figure is “correct”?

Both — because they measure different things.

The trick is that one figure is closer to “handed down from Whitehall”, and the other is closer to “everything the Government thinks you’ve got, including what you’ll raise from council tax”. 

The two numbers everyone’s arguing about

1) “Fair Funding Allocation” (FFA): the grant-and-redistribution pot

This is the part of the settlement tied to the Fair Funding reforms — essentially the redistributable “core” funding machinery (including elements like Revenue Support Grant, Baseline Funding Levels, and the Local Authority Better Care Grant as described in the settlement material). 

The Government published a Fair funding allocation multi-year calculator for the three-year period. 

2) “Core Spending Power” (CSP): the Government’s headline “how much you can spend” measure

CSP is the Government’s preferred headline number. It explicitly bundles together funding through the updated assessment plus council tax, business rates and grants — i.e., it’s not just “a cheque from central government”. 

This is why CSP is bigger — and why it can rise sharply even when a big slice of that rise is basically assumed council tax increases. 

What the official spreadsheets say Kent gets (2026/27 to 2028/29)

All figures below are cash terms, taken from the Government’s published settlement spreadsheets for the multi-year period (rounded for readability).

A) Kent’s Fair Funding Allocation (the “£50m boost” story)

From the Government’s FFA multi-year calculator: 

• 2025/26 “Total Redistributable Funding” (baseline used in the calculator): £518.5m

• 2026/27 Fair Funding Allocation: £569.7m (+£51.1m)

• 2027/28 Fair Funding Allocation: £613.1m

• 2028/29 Fair Funding Allocation: £659.1m

That “more than £50 million” framing you’ve seen locally maps neatly onto the £569.7m vs £518.5m comparison — the uplift is about £51m in cash terms. 

B) Kent’s Core Spending Power (the “£127m next year / nearly £1.9bn by 2028/29” story)

From the Government’s Core Spending Power table and explanatory note: 

• 2025/26 CSP: £1.530bn

• 2026/27 CSP: £1.658bn (+£127m)

• 2027/28 CSP: £1.774bn

• 2028/29 CSP: £1.894bn (+£364m vs 2025/26; +23.8%)

That last line is why you’ll also see “nearly £1.9bn” and “about 23.8%” discussed in local coverage — it’s consistent with the official CSP trajectory. 

So which number should readers believe: £50m or £127m?

The honest answer is: both — depending on which Whitehall yardstick you use.
Using the Government’s fair funding calculator, Kent rises from £518.5m to £569.7m — a touch over £50m, and the obvious source of the “boost” headline.

Using the Government’s preferred headline measure, Core Spending Power, Kent rises from £1.530bn to £1.658bn — about £127m.

The missing subplot: CSP includes council tax (so “more funding” can mean “you pay more”)

The Government’s CSP note is explicit that Core Spending Power includes council tax alongside other funding streams. 

And in Kent’s case, the official CSP tables show the assumed council tax component rising sharply:

• council tax element within CSP rises from about £994.3m (2025/26) to £1,062.2m (2026/27) — an increase of about £67.9m. 

That is over half of the £127m CSP uplift from 2025/26 to 2026/27.

So the cleanest “layman translation” is:

Kent’s headline pot is bigger — but a big part of that bigger pot is the Government assuming Kent residents pay more council tax. 

Or, in classic committee-room dialect:

Citizen: “So Whitehall gave Kent £127m?”
Official: “We made available £127m, including locally-raised contributions.”
Citizen: “Including mine.”
Official: “Including yours.”

And what about the national figures up to 2028/29?

Nationally, Ministers have framed the settlement using CSP totals for England:

• “over £77.7 billion” Core Spending Power for 2026/27, and

• “over £84.6 billion” by 2028/29. 

That language also appears in the Government’s parliamentary statement on the settlement. 

So if you’ve seen those England-wide totals quoted, they’re not random: they’re the Government’s own CSP framing.

One last practical point: these are provisional numbers

This is a provisional settlement and it is being consulted on, with final allocations expected after the process completes. 
The sector also expects the final 2026/27 settlement to be laid before Parliament in late January or early February 2026. 

So the right way to describe the figures is: “provisional allocations published in December 2025 for 2026/27–2028/29.” 

Bottom line (the number you use depends on the question you’re asking)

If you mean “how much extra settlement redistribution / fair funding allocation is Kent getting?”
→ about £51m next year (using the Government’s FFA calculator comparison). 

If you mean “how much bigger is the Government’s headline ‘resources available’ pot for Kent?”
→ about £127m next year on Core Spending Power, rising to about £1.894bn by 2028/29. 

And if you mean “is that all coming from Whitehall?”
→ no: CSP includes assumed council tax, and for Kent the council tax element rises by about £67.9m just between 2025/26 and 2026/27. 

Kent’s funding looks bigger on paper, but much of the “increase” depends on what residents are expected to pay locally.

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