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Integrated Settlement
In April 2025, the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) became the first English region (alongside Greater Manchester) to receive an Integrated Settlement. From April 2026, we will receive our first multi-year settlement, a huge four-year funding package that is the latest step in an unprecedented shift in power, money and responsibility from Westminster to the West Midlands.
What is the Integrated Settlement?
Life before the Integrated Settlement was complex. The WMCA received dozens of individual funds from Government, each with their own rules and targets. We and our local authority partners also had to spend a lot of time and resource bidding into competitive national processes.
The Integrated Settlement is changing this for the better. It will bring together funding from Government that relates to six thematic policy areas (Economic development and regeneration, Transport and local infrastructure, Skills and employment support, Housing and strategic planning, Environment and climate change, and Health, wellbeing and public service reform) into a single funding pot.
The first Integrated Settlement began in April 2025 and will run to 31 March 2026, while the multi-year settlement will begin in April 2026 and run until April 2029.
What does it mean for the West Midlands' residents and businesses?
The Integrated Settlement gives the WMCA and our local authority partners greater control and choice over what we can spend devolved funding on. This is helping us to deliver more impact for the people of the West Midlands, including through driving forward schemes to turn brownfield sites into homes, maintaining the region’s bus network, funding skills and training provision, growing the Business Growth West Midlands support system for local businesses and making homes and buildings more energy efficient to reduce energy bills and carbon emissions.
In receiving a single pot of funding, we will be better equipped to address complex challenges and opportunities that require a multi-pronged approach – like improving the economy or making progress towards reaching net zero emissions, for example.
The Integrated Settlement provides greater certainty over the funding we are likely to receive over the next four years. This will allow us to address longer-term opportunities and challenges.
And for the first time, the WMCA will be able to move a limited amount of funding between policy areas – from one thematic policy area to another – so long as we can still deliver the outcomes we agree with Government.
How much will the West Midlands get?
The first settlement for (financial year) 2025 was £389 million. The multi-year settlement for the WMCA is £2.5bn – comprised of 27 funds from 8 different government departments. This settlement includes Transport for City Region funding and new responsibilities related to homelessness, skills and the creative industry.
This £2.5 billion is not ‘new’ money. It is money that we were expecting to come to the region from Government, in most cases to continue things we are already delivering. But through the Integrated Settlement, it will come to us with the advantages described above.
The Integrated Settlement includes the majority of funding the region receives from Government but isn’t the sum of the WMCA’s budget, which also includes, for example, the transport levy paid by local authorities and Investment Programme.
How are local authorities involved?
Local authorities have and will be central to the development and delivery of the Integrated Settlement. Ahead of the first settlement, all seven constituent local authorities developed Place-Based Strategies, which set out their vision for how funding – from the Integrated Settlement and other sources – can be used to transform communities and places, building on their existing plans and visions. Local authorities will also be central to delivering many of the projects and interventions that will be funded through the Integrated Settlement.
What will happen next?
- We expect the outcomes framework for the multi-year Integrated Settlement to be agreed in early 2026. The outcomes are the things that we expect to change in the region as a result of the programmes that we will deliver.
- In early 2026, WMCA Board will be asked to consider the terms of the Integrated Settlement as part of the Budget report.
- The WMCA will receive the multi-year Integrated Settlement payment in April 2026.