The Budget sets up a new ring-fenced budget for prevention spending, called the Preventative Departmental Expenditure Limit (PDEL). It will be introduced at the 2027 Spending Review, Civil Service World reports.
In his Budget speech, the Chancellor, John Healey, said the government would "ringfence prevention spending that brings down costs in the future".
The Red Book says the PDEL will protect programmes with longer-term benefits and gives rough sleeping as an example. It estimates the fiscal cost of each person sleeping rough at around £14,000 a year.
The Institute for Government had already welcomed the move to protect prevention budgets. Davies, the IfG's director of public services, said:
"This may sound like a dry change to budget definitions, but it has the power to be transformational, shifting not just funding but how services are designed."