Council boss fears government won't help authority fill £30m coronavirus hole

THE leader of BCP Council has said she fears local authorities may be forced themselves to fill multi-million-pound funding shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Cllr Vikki Slade said the council had been told to “spend what you need” by the government in March – but that it may now not be compensated for a £30m financial gap, writes Josh Wright of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

She said her “biggest fear” was the responsibility being passed onto the council through lifting the cap on how much council tax can be increased in a single year.

The council has been awarded grants totalling about £22m to cover the cost of work, including the establishment of a temporary mortuary. But even after this, it is forecasting a £30m shortfall.

Chief executive Graham Farrant said he was involved in a conference call with local government secretary Robert Jenrick in March during which councils were told they would not face “financial problems” as a result of their coronavirus response.

He said this position had now been changed with the government seemingly no longer willing to assist councils where they had seen income “fall off a cliff”.

More than 30% of the council’s income is from sources that are not council tax, business rates or directly from the government – the fourth highest proportion of any local authority in the country.

Cllr Slade said: “They were saying, ‘Spend what you need, do what you need to do, we will support you’ – two weeks later you get Rishi Sunak [the chancellor] saying it will be a shared responsibility.”

She added there were no plans to change the approach of equalising council tax across the three towns in two years.