North Yorkshire has warmly welcomed an additional £ 1.6 bn in Government funding announced for councils today to help with rapidly escalating costs to meet the challenges of the Covid-19 crisis.
The County Council, which has made clear to Government in recent days the pressing financial challenges created by the pandemic, will learn of its individual allocation next week.
Cllr Carl Les, North Yorkshire County Council’s Leader, said:
We greatly appreciate that Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has been listening to us. He has taken on board that we urgently need additional funding for the crucial role we are playing in pulling communities together and building trust among people to fight the pandemic and for that we are thankful.
The County Council was asked to submit an estimate of costs as a result of Covid-19. This return showed that the Council’s finances would be £65m worse than had been anticipated before the pandemic. Whilst £15m had been provided by government as additional grant, that still left a shortfall of £50m.
North Yorkshire has worked rapidly to transform services to meet the crisis, setting up emergency school hubs for the children of critical workers, supporting the NHS and care providers to cope with their increased costs, sourcing additional PPE, coordinating an army of volunteers and creating a new way of working for frontline social care teams.
Cllr Carl Les, North Yorkshire County Council’s Leader, said:
We don’t yet know the size of this additional allocation for the County Council but this extra funding will undoubtedly help to bridge the gap.
Nevertheless we still face massive financial challenges and we estimated that the original allocation of £15m of grant for Covid-19 needed to be quadrupled to deal with the estimated costs.
Even before this crisis North Yorkshire, as England’s largest county, desperately needed clarity around long-term funding solutions, particularly for adult social care and special educational needs, in the face of unrelenting demand.
North Yorkshire’s financial planning has been dependent on nearly £62 million of temporary funding after the Council lost around £136 million in direct grants from government since 2011 when austerity began.
