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Integrated Settlement
From April 2026, the West Midlands Combined Authority will receive its first multi-year Integrated 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 ran 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 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. Alongside our local authority and delivery partners, it will give the region 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 reducing our energy consumption, for example. By allowing the WMCA to move a proportion of funding between policy areas – from one thematic policy area to another – the Integrated Settlement allows the WMCA to support the initiatives that will make the most difference to our region.
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 £2.6bn – comprised of 30 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 £2.6 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 the 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. This work underpinned the WMCA’s Investment Prospectus, which sets out the region’s priority ‘Place Portfolios’, which will drive growth and public and private investment across the West Midlands.
What will happen next?
- In February 2026, WMCA Board accepted the Integrated Settlement as part of the Consolidated Budget report.
- The outcomes framework for the multi-year Integrated Settlement was agreed in March 2026 and sets out the things that we expect to change in the region as a result of the programmes that we will deliver.
- The WMCA received the first annual instalment of the multi-year Integrated Settlement in April 2026.
- Reporting to Government on our progress towards delivering outcomes will take place on a six-month basis.