Agenda item

Councillor Max Schmid stated that as the government had broken its promise to fully fund councils for the financial impact of the pandemic, this Council now had a deficit of £13.7 million, even before moving into a second wave of the pandemic.  The financial impact of the pandemic had been aggravated by a decade of austerity due to previous reductions in government funding. Therefore, the Council should avoid entering into any significant new unfunded financial commitments. The Council had a good level of reserves retained over the last few years that would need to be used if significant additional government grant was not made available. Many councils around the country were not in this fortunate position and were cutting down services to residents and making large scale redundancies. Thus, Councillor Schmid appealed to the government to honour the commitment it had originally made to fully fund councils to meet the financial cost of Covid-19.

Councillor Sue Fennimore stated that it was deeply disappointing that England did not have a short lockdown of two to three weeks to bring the rising rate of coronavirus under control, that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for a few weeks ago. It would have made sense to the public to do that over the half-term. Now the second lockdown would have a significant impact on residents and on the Council’s finances.

Councillor Ben Coleman provided an update on what the Council was doing to prepare for the second lockdown, which he agreed should have started earlier and be shorter. The Council had a strong plan to manage this second wave and was focusing on supporting the community and ensuring critical services were maintained. He thanked all officers involved in preparing this plan, particularly Linda Jackson, Director of Covid-19 response & recovery, Dr Nicola Lang, Director of Public Health, and Lisa Redfern, Strategic Director of Social Care. He informed that the Council was stepping up contact tracing to mitigate and manage local outbreaks, as the national test and trace system was proving to be inadequate and was only reaching 60% of people with the virus. The Council was reaching 90% of the unreachablepeople by knocking on the doors of residents who the central system had failed to contact, encouraging them to self-isolate. Councillor Coleman strongly believed the government should use the four weeks of the lockdown to turn NHS Test and Trace into a locally led service, putting local authorities and local public health officials in the driving seat in the battle against this pandemic, with appropriate delegated powers and funding. He added that H&F CAN was still supporting residents and would shortly be sending a letter to all residents who were previously shielded to offer their support. He also stated that flu immunisation was being made accessible and available to all vulnerable residents to reduce the impact of Covid-19.

Councillor Sue Fennimore stated that Professor Kevin Fenton, London regional director for Public Health England, had praised the Council for the work being done regarding test and trace, which exceeded other areas of the country; despite not having received the amount of money originally promised by the government.

Councillor Larry Culhane informed that following the government decision to refuse to fund children free school meals during half-term, the Council had stepped in and created a scheme to provide free school meals for over 5,000 students plus an additional 20% for schools to use at their discretion. He thanked all officers who managed to create this scheme in less than one day, Tesco for providing the vouches in such a short notice and particularly the schools for distributing them on time. The Council was already beginning plans to step in during Christmas to carry on providing free school meals as it was expected the government would also refuse to provide them over that period.

RESOLVED:

1.  To note the contents of the report which detail the financial impact of Covid-19 on the council and the actions being taken to mitigate pressures.

2.  Agree that, as a result of these financial pressures, that the council should not enter into any significant new unfunded financial commitments.