Agenda item

Report of the Chief Executive detailing the Council’s response to Covid-19.

Report of the Chief Executive detailing the Council’s response to Covid-19.

Following the report presented in July regarding the Council’s response to COVID-19, the Leader of the Council presented a further update on the Council’s response.

The Leader wanted to start by reiterating thanks to all staff who have continued to work hard to support our businesses and communities, as well as the ongoing work of NHS staff and key workers in the borough and across the country.  The Leader also thanked the teaching staff across the borough and country who have enabled children to return to school in the last week or so.

Council have received updates at all meetings since the pandemic started and since July you will see in today’s report that the Council have continued to support our communities and businesses through this pandemic, as well as delivering all our services.  The Leader highlighted a few key points below:

•   The Leader, along with other Hertfordshire leaders, have supported how we respond to the pandemic and is part of the Community Resilience Cell supporting all our colleagues across the County and the Local Outbreak Plan Member Engagement Board;

•   The Safety Advisory Team are working with partners to ensure any potential events in the Borough have safe arrangements in place so they can go ahead;

•   The Public Health and Protection team are working with colleagues across the County to support the local outbreak plan and ensure the Council can deliver any required track and trace investigations and enforcement.;

•   Since the last Council meeting we have seen GLL reopen our leisure centres and pools and also High Ropes reopened last month.  The Leader was also particularly pleased that the Council’s new Splashlands facility successfully opened and even in these difficult times has been incredibly popular;

•   Hotel accommodation continued to be provided to homeless households and multi-agency groups had been set up to ensure that both housing and support needs could be met for people who were formerly rough sleeping or at risk of rough sleeping. A funding bid has been submitted to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government under their Next Steps programme;

•   Across a number of our services we are dealing with backlogs created by lockdown and are ensuring we can deliver these services as quickly as possible and in a priority based way;

•   The local plan enquiry process has continued and the Local Enterprise Partnership had prepared a draft economic recovery plan;

•   The Business and Planning Act was quickly introduced, and our procedures, local conditions and applications were rapidly made available on our website so that businesses could apply.

•   We have paid out £15.3M in business rate grants, which is 98% of out funding allocation and £800,000 was paid out to support 72 businesses from our Discretionary Business Grant scheme;

•   Our reception was reopened from 29 July and protective screens, floor markings and signage had been installed. A booking system had been introduced to enable customers to make an appointment prior to coming into the reception.

•   The Council had continued to successfully run virtual committee meetings;

The Council’s staff and partners have continued to work tirelessly for our communities and businesses and will continue to do so over the coming months.

This has not come without financial pressures and challenges. We are still facing significant financial in year pressures of nearly £5.3M.

In terms of the General Fund, the estimated impact amounts to £4.8M. Taking into account the government support available to date of £1.5M, plus the £400,000 Covid-19 reserve set up at the end of 2019/20, the net impact is around £2.9M.  As a result of prudent financial management in the past, the Leader was happy to say that we have the reserves to absorb this and the income guarantee, along with the phased repayment of collection fund deficit over three years will help to reduce the budget impact further.

All of the grant funding announced so far had been for General Fund only, therefore the estimated budget impact on the Housing Revenue Account remained at £500,000, of which £168,000 is revenue.

The financial implications will continue to be monitored as part of the budget monitoring process and Cabinet received a report last week on the Council’s medium term financial strategy and COVID impact to our plans.

We will continue to see the impact that pandemic had on our communities and businesses, as well as the Council and the whole of the country.  It has been a challenging time, but the Leader has continued to be extremely proud of everything our communities, businesses, partners, staff and councillors have done and continue to do.

It was moved and seconded by Councillors T.Kingsbury and D.Bell and

RESOLVED:

(unanimous)

Councillors noted the content of the report, the continued impacts of the pandemic on the Council’s operations and the work undertaken to date.