A £15 million increase in the weighting to help local authorities deliver services to rural areas can only be a first step, local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger has warned.

The Government has increased the size of the Rural Services Delivery grant to £110 million next year, the largest increase for six years.

There will be an extra £530,000 for Somerset Council as a result.

But West Somerset MP Mr Liddell-Grainger, who will stand in the forthcoming General Election for a new constituency covering the Culm Valley and parishes around Wellington, said the extra allocation would only go part-way toward correcting under-funding.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said: “It is at least faintly reassuring that the Government has finally accepted that there is such a thing as the rural premium, the extra cost of delivering goods and services to the countryside.

“But I still do not believe Ministers understand or appreciate the magnitude of the problem, a problem which has been significantly exacerbated by the recent increases in energy costs.”

Mr Liddell-Grainger said it was essential largely rural local authorities were financially able to cope with the exceptional costs they faced. 

He said: “A recent survey has shown how far the countryside continues to lag economically behind the rest of the country thanks to slow broadband, patchy mobile phone coverage, and a skeletal public transport network.

“People working there are 19 per cent less productive than the average precisely because of these factors.

“If we could succeed in levelling up those areas the general economy would benefit to the tune of more than £40 billion.

“That is why I shall continue to press the Government for a more realistic settlement for Somerset Council so that the rural areas under its management receive the same levels of service and support as the towns and do not fall further behind on the economic front.”