Form

Changes and key points to note - Revenue Account 2026-27 form

Updated 13 February 2026

Applies to England

A. Data items and the form

1. This year sees a number of changes to grant lines in the form following consolidation into four new grants plus the Revenue Support Grant. Additionally, some grants previously entered as part of the ‘other grants’ categories have been included as individual lines (for example Homes for Ukraine and Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility).

2. As agreed at CLIP-F, we have made two further changes to expenditure reporting:

a. HRA expenditure relating to debt repayment or non-interest charges (RA4026) has been split into two lines, one covering depreciation and one covering all other debt repayment or non-interest charges.
b. Public health reporting on substance misuse has been grouped such that the previously separate adult drug and alcohol reporting categories are now reported as one each for adult treatment and for adult prevention.

3. Following the conclusion of the Local Enterprise Partnership (LAP) funding, we have clarified that reporting on investment properties should relate to former LEP areas where mentioned in lines INVPRP1 to INVPRP4.

4. As usual, we have populated grant allocations where these were available in time. e.g. from the final local government finance settlement, Public Health Grant, Dedicated Schools Grant and Police Grants. When you select your authority’s name in the template, these will feed into the relevant cells.

5. Please do not alter the cells that are shaded in purple in the Excel data preparation template. These are formulae that must not be changed.

6. All figures must be rounded to the nearest £ thousand upon input. Where pasting in data from other software, which may include decimals, please check resulting totals and adjust individual entries to achieve expected rounded results.

B. Exclusion of the finances of academies

Please be sure that expenditure and financing of academies are excluded from this return (also from other related data returns to MHCLG). These must be excluded starting from the date when a maintained school converts to become an academy.

C. Other guidance on scope and definitions

For further guidance on scope, see the RA General Guidance.

Please note that:

• the RA (budget) return is defined on the same basis as the Revenue Outturn returns
• the RA (budget) return requires figures to be reported as ‘net current expenditure’. This is defined in relation to SERCOP groups in Section 3 of the RA General Guidance.

D. Guidance note on requirement for comments and explanations

Following requests for guidance on what details are expected in explanation comment boxes in the forms, we developed a short guidance note on what is required for a validation explanation to be adequate. Providing specific explanations will reduce the need for the Department to contact you again for this information.