Spending plans for 2025/26 need to be announced before November of this year. This provides departments with the time necessary to translate their overall departmental settlement into individual allocations for programmes and policies through their internal business planning processes. It would also allow central government to provide local government with a provisional finance settlement in December, which would enable local authorities to meet the statutory deadlines for finalising their budgets.  

Within these timing constraints, the next government will face a choice between providing departments with multi-year spending settlements, as is the norm, or ‘rolling over’ budgets for one year to buy more time to do a full multi-year settlement. It will be tempting to deliver a multi-year settlement as soon as possible, to demonstrate that the government is getting going on delivering its policy agenda from day one. Multi-year budgets also come with efficiency benefits as they enable departments to plan more effectively. 

But these advantages are outweighed by the risks they involve. There is a high probability that rushing such a multi-year settlement comes unstuck and needs to be topped up in subsequent years, while it is also unlikely to lead to the complex and difficult choices necessary to achieve the government’s objectives. For a government wanting to use the multi-year spending review as a big 'strategic moment', the process will take longer than a few months.  

There is also the possibility of an election – held in December or January – taking place after the spending review deadline. Then what? Setting budgets for the year ahead becomes only more urgent, and the current government may have to provide a provisional local government settlement ahead of the election. In an ideal – yet unrealistic – world, a cross-party agreement would be reached on a minimum budget for each department ahead of the election (and before November) for 2025/26.