Thank you for contacting me about funding for our local authorities. The pandemic has put new and significant pressures on traditional sources of local authority funding, as well as greatly expanding the work of local councils in many areas. Our councils are doing vital work to help tackle the demands of COVID-19 whilst also delivering the ordinary services that residents across the constituency rely on.
I very much welcome that over March and April 2020, the government provided £3.2 billion of emergency grant funding and over £5 billion of cashflow support to support local authorities in response Covid-19. On 2 July 2020, the Secretary of State announced a further set of support measures, including:
- A new scheme to reimburse councils for lost income from sales, fees, and charges
- Changes enabling local authorities to spread their tax deficits over three years rather than the usual one
- A further £500 million of un-ringfenced funding to respond to spending pressures
I have been working with your councils locally to ensure that they get the funding they need to see them through these difficult times, and am pleased to say that Teignbridge has already received over £1.6 million in additional funding, with the Devon local authority area as a whole receiving over £44 million. I will continue to raise any concerns about funding difficulties with central government on behalf of our area.
