February is shaping up to be a hugely consequential month for local government finance. The first major part was the publication of the final local government finance settlement. This confirmed the major elements set out in the provisional settlement including the extremely welcome £600m Recovery Grant, the vital new Children's Social Care Prevention Grant funding and the repurposing of other grant funding, including the poorly-targeted Rural Services Delivery Grant.

Our analysis shows the most deprived decile of councils received an overall increase around double that of the least deprived decile. After 14 years when the opposite has happened, this is welcome indeed.