Council response to the government’s consultation on Covid-19 funding

The Government provided details of the Covid-19 funding for local government in 2021-22.

The Government also set up a consultation on the local government finance settlement 2021-22.

South Oxfordshire District Council’s response to the consultation is summarised below:

We welcome the additional funding support being proposed for councils for 2021-22.  However, are concerned that the additional funding appears to be premised on the financial costs of the pandemic starting to decline significantly from Easter onwards.  This is also evidenced by:

• The local income tax guarantee scheme only supporting losses in 2020-21

• The sales, fees and charges compensation scheme (which does not cover all income losses and of those it does support only reimburses 75 per cent of losses after deducting 5 per cent) only supports losses during the first three months of 2021-22

Councils will feel the effects of the losses, particularly income losses, for some time to come, certainly beyond the end of June 2021. 

We would call for all income losses to be recompensed, and for future local government funding to acknowledge that council revenues have taken a long term hit from the pandemic and that the support package, whilst very welcome, does not reflect all the financial consequences that councils have suffered.