5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:35 pm on 29 April 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:35, 29 April 2020

So, we're obviously very grateful to have had the consequential off the UK Government. We've already given out £110 million to local authorities, and we were well ahead of the consequential arriving, but, yes, we're working very hard, as I said in response to earlier questions—. We're working very hard with local authorities to understand the actuals on the ground. This isn't about a formula or trying to work out a one-size-fits-all. This is about trying to work out with each authority what their actual issues are and to try and cover them off.

As you rightly said, Mark, we're doing a piece of work with the WLGA and local authorities at the moment to understand what their lost income looks like. That's lost fees and charges income and so on. That's income other than council tax and non-domestic rates. We're doing a different piece of work to understand what the effect of lost council tax, the increased claiming of council tax relief and the loss of NDR looks like for them, so there are other bits of work going on for that. I have a meeting of the finance sub-group of the partnership council tomorrow in which we will have a look at the first situation of that and run through what we're doing, and we're very keen to work with them.

I would like to make it clear, though, that depending on how long this goes on for, so if the lockdown continues another two months—it's hypothetical, I hasten to say; I'm not saying that will happen, but if it happened—then, clearly, at the other end of the year, we would have a problem. So, I don't have infinite resources, the UK Government would also have that problem, and we will have to work very closely with them to see what would happen the other end. So, what we've done is frontloaded it, told people to do the right thing, 'Don't worry about it right now. We'll cover you off and then we'll work together as we understand what this looks like to understand what the longer term impact will be.' And you're quite right, local authorities will have different positions and we're very much reacting to it in that way. So, it's not a one-size-fits-all; we're not using the formula approach. We're working with each individual authority.