Cheshire East Council has joined other Local Authorities to press government for additional funding to meet costs of Covid-19 claiming that the projected shortfall may be £60m.
There is no doubt that Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on Council finances as income streams have been cut off by lock-down measures, costs to manage Covid-19 demands have soared in terms of social and community care and the demand for support for local residents whose finances have been affected has risen.
Nonetheless, when added up, it turns out that Cheshire East has already received more than £100m to meet these costs, cope with rising demand, support businesses and help to manage the cost of containing Covid-19 transmission in our care homes and domiciliary care services.
This funding includes:
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£19.6m Emergency Funding
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£ 5.3m Infection Control Funding
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£ 2.0m Council Tax Relief
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£ 0.339k High Street Fund
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£76.3m Business Grants (of which further monies to a total of £95.5m are still available to SMEs who have not yet come forward to claim).
This is a total to date of £103.5m (with £19.2m SME Grant Monies and £4.28m Discretionary Grant Funding still to be distributed).
The fact that Cheshire East has been spending millions extra on providing adult and children social care, providing PPE and housing rough sleepers is not in doubt. That all services are affected, including increased costs of running services such as highways and waste, (due to the need for social distancing and new health precautions), is not disputed and it is understood that the council is inevitably losing significant amounts in lost revenue from council tax, business rates, parking income and leisure/culture fees.
However, part of the on-going work of the Council will be the urgent re-establishment of the in-built mechanisms of all Local Authorities by which which the administration is held to account for its management of this extraordinary period of public spending. This will be through its Corporate Overview & Scrutiny and its Audit and Governance Functions.
This process starts this month as Virtual Cross-Party Scrutiny Meetings are re-scheduled and the wider body of elected councillors from all parties, are able to start examining how Cheshire East Council is managing its finances during the Pandemic and whether or not, calls for more funding are required or justified.
Further information:
https://www.cfps.org.uk/?publication=covid-19-guide-5-council-finances-and-scrutiny