Where a local authority borrows, it must set aside money each year to repay the debt, so the costs do not fall wholly on future council taxpayers; this is known as Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP). MRP ensures councils reflect the cost of borrowing 16 C&AG’s Report, p. 39; Committee of Public Accounts, COVID-19: Local government finance, Fourth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 239, 4 June 2021; Q11. 17 Comptroller and Auditor General, Local government finance in the pandemic, Session 2019–21, HC 1240, 10 March 2021, para 2.16 18 Committee of Public Accounts, Oral evidence: Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recall, HC 744, 1 November 2021, Qq 11–17 and 55. 19 Committee of Public Accounts, Financial sustainability of local authorities, Twenty-Sixth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 708, 18 November 2016 20 C&AG’s Report, Figure 14. 21 Committee of Public Accounts, Financial sustainability of local authorities, Twenty-Sixth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 708, 18 November 2016, recommendations 1 and 6, pages 5 and 7 22 Comptroller and Auditor General, Local authority investment in commercial property, HC 45, Session 2019–20, 13 February 2020. 23 Committee of Public Accounts, Local authority investment in commercial property, Eleventh Report of Session 2019–21, HC 312, 13 July 2020; C&AG’s Report, Figure 14 24 Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Local authority capital finance framework: planned improvements, policy paper, 28 July 2021, available at Local authority capital finance framework: planned improvements - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk); Q14 12 Local Government Finance System: Overview and Challenges in their current budgets and act prudently.25 In 2016, when the then Committee asked the Department about its ability to identify capital and investment trends it told us it had identified changes in MRP practice that were “worth analysing”.26 The Department changed its statutory guidance on MRP in February 2018.27 Nonetheless, the level of MRP made i