Allocating the £1.6bn - what it means for Kent

Ten days ago, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) announced a second tranche of £1.6bn in support to local government. Yesterday MHCLG confirmed the allocation of this funding to individual local authorities - and it turned out to be on a very different basis to the first tranche.

The government made clear that the sharply different split of funding between County and District Councils reflects the financial pressure being felt (by Districts in particular) as a result of residents staying at home as requested during lockdown, and therefore not using services including car parks and leisure facilities. The first tranche was allocated overwhelmingly towards Counties in two-tier areas, with a strong focus on social care pressures. This time, the split between County and District authorities is 65:35.

The government has also confirmed that the Review of Relative Needs and Resources (the Fair Funding Review) and 75% business rates retention will no longer be implemented in 2021-22 to allow councils to focus on meeting the immediate public health challenge posed by the pandemic. The further deferral of the Fair Funding Review is deeply disappointing but inevitable under the circumstances; you can find the very measured assessment of this by the County Councils Network here.

Looking at the breakdown of allocations in Kent, the County Council receives £11m less in this second tranche than in the first (down from £39m to £28m), while the Districts in Kent will receive in total an additional £15m (up from £709K to £16m), meaning overall the allocation for the county has increased by £4m.

We are all aware of the enormous pressure being put on the whole local government family in Kent as we respond to this crisis. We will all continue to work together to ensure we keep our services running wherever this is possible and meet the new demands which arise from protecting the most vulnerable in the county with innovation and determination. It is not known how long the crisis will last and in the meantime the ongoing pressures on social care will remain; we will have to continue to provide PPE; support providers and businesses in Kent and deal with the many other calls on our funding.

Additional support for our District colleagues is very welcome; we all serve the same residents, and the pressures felt by Districts, especially through loss of revenue, are very real. However, as the County Councils Network has pointed out, Counties have seen a 29% fall in allocations between the two tranches and now face huge unfunded pressures, especially in areas such as social care, which could force a requirement to stop all non-essential expenditure . For KCC, while the £67m in grant from Government (combining the two tranches) is welcome, our latest forecast of the total financial impact on us in 2020-21 terms of extra spending and lost income is some £133m - twice the total grant so far.   

And so it will be necessary to continue to make the case directly to Government for recognition of the work we are all doing and the continuing costs of the essential support we are giving to Kent’s residents and businesses. Which is what we will continue to do.

Plans for reopening Household Waste Recycling Centres

The Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick, today asked councils to plan for the organised reopening of their Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs). We have been informed that updated guidance will be published shortly to support local government to open sites safely during the Coronavirus pandemic.

 

Kent County Council closed its HWRCs on 23 March, and councils with waste disposal responsibilities across the country took similar action; travel to an HWRC is not an "essential journey" as defined in the Health Protection (Coronavirus) (England) Restrictions 2020, and police advice accords with the guidance.

Since the start of the closures, KCC has been supporting a range of collection activities by District and Borough Councils, and we have given priority to sustaining and extending the capacity of our Waste Transfer Stations, which accept trade waste and that from District and Borough kerbside collections, playing a vital role in supporting them.

Nonetheless, we have set out for some time that we intend to reopen HWRCs as soon as it is safe and feasible to do so. Susan Carey (Cabinet Member for Environment) and I have been clear as to our direction of policy, and officers have been working to deliver the practical steps necessary to enable reopening to take place, and to do so safely with effective social distancing and traffic management in place, using a booking system that we are developing jointly with Medway Council.

Other necessary conditions for reopening HWRCs include ensuring Personal Protection Equipment for our staff; effective operation of the companies who dispose of some of the waste presented at our sites (quite a few of whom have ceased operation during the shutdown); and a coordinated approach with neighbouring local authorities. All of these matters are being actively pursued. Any authority that reopens unilaterally will face an influx of demand, especially at sites near the county border; and while a booking system should in theory militate against that, it is unlikely to prevent residents from neighbouring authorities where the HWRCs remain closed from moving across the border in the belief that they can access our centres.

And, as the County Councils Network has pointed out in response to the Secretary of State's announcement, we still await and require clear guidance as to what constitutes an "essential journey' during the lockdown.                           

Nonetheless, our direction as a Council is clear and we hope to provide more specific timelines on reopening soon.                                       

  

Virtual Cabinet meeting: the formal version

Last Monday, as I previewed the day before, KCC's Cabinet held its first remote (or virtual) public Member meeting (using Microsoft Teams). The meeting was something of a hybrid; a Cabinet briefing, incorporating reports from Cabinet Members and answering questions put by Members. You can see that meeting here.

I closed the meeting by looking forward to the following Monday (tomorrow, 27 April) where we would have a further public meeting, but this time a formal meeting of Cabinet. The meeting will be from 10 am, and the agenda will include: a report on the Public Health-led Suicide Prevention Programme, which can point to some progress in tackling this most painful of issues; a presentation on our Kent Together programme, launched at the start of this month to enhance and support the extraordinary community efforts to help vulnerable residents during the Covid-19 outbreak; and (necessarily, but perhaps a little self-referentially) a paper on the governance requirements for virtual meetings.

However, the most interesting item is saved for last, under the rubric of 'Covid-19 Corporate Planning'. The Council's Five Year Plan, put forward for endorsement at the March County Council meeting which never took place because of the crisis, was a good and strong vision for the county and for the council - but is now entirely overtaken by events. We must now plan for a new world, and tomorrow's presentation and debate is the start of that process. We aim to prepare a Strategic Transition Plan for the autumn, to cover a 12-18 month period as the new environment post-Covid takes shape. This alone should make for an important and engaging meeting tomorrow morning.

PPE: progress but always precarious

There has been huge, and justified national attention on the issue of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the Covid-19 crisis. Pressures are felt at the levels of national and global supply chains, but Kent County Council, working through the Kent Resilience Forum and our commercial company, Kent Commercial Services, has undertaken extensive work to deliver PPE within the county. 

This is separate from, and additional to the several drops of supplies from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which I and other senior Members and officers have consistently lobbied for. All this was done from a starting point where KCC held only modest stocks of PPE for the use of our own staff,  while care providers sourced their own supplies. 

At close of business on 23 April, we had supplied over 1.4 million pieces of PPE in over 700 separate deliveries since the 3 April.  The table below provides details of the equipment delivered – all of it essential to support the safe provision of services to the most vulnerable. 

Items	Total
Type IIR Masks (or equivalent)	258,400
Respirator masks (or equivalent)	10,660
Extra-large gloves	10,260
Large gloves	251,420
Medium gloves	380,300
Small gloves	155,400
Aprons	319,200
Protective Goggles	14,307
Sanitiser 100ml	4,825
Sanitiser 500ml	120
Sanitiser 5L	112
Clinical waste bags.	16,000

Deliveries have happened every day, with the exception of Easter Sunday, and even that day was covered by our daily out of hours service.  The weekend of 18 and 19 April saw 170 separate deliveries.

All PPE and deliveries have been made free of charge.  By working closely with our partners in the Kent Resilience Forum our supply chain, which includes Kent based suppliers, has got and continues to get more robust.  We now have more substantial stocks of some key items including over 600,000 of the Type IIR Surgical Mask with more on the way, which were in very short supply only a few weeks ago. 

None of this is plain sailing and some items, such as Respirator Masks, are still quite scarce, albeit we have now sourced a reliable supply.  Demand for equipment and deliveries from KCC continues to rise.  The average daily delivery of Type IIR Masks over the last 21 days has been 12,300.  On 23^rd April 25,000 were despatched with over 29,000 already ordered for delivery on the 24^th April.  Forecasting demand has been and continues to be very difficult, exacerbated by the evolving national guidance on the correct use of PPE which has been a challenge both in terms of supply but also for our own services and provides in their provision of clear guidance to front line carers and staff.

There have been recent reports that a national online portal allowing primary and social care providers to order supplies of PPE will not be fully operational for another five weeks.  This acts as a reminder that even with the huge amount of work described here, the situation will always remain fragile, reflecting the rapid use of the equipment, changes in national guidance and fluctuations in deliveries from the centre.  Given these extreme difficulties that are widely acknowledged to exist in this area, it is right to be proud of the excellent work that has been done by KCC and the KRF. But the situation continues to evolve and remains precarious.

A new style of council meeting

Tomorrow morning (Monday 20 April) I will chair the first of KCC's public meetings to be held virtually, with a Cabinet Briefing at 10 am.

Since the Covid-19 shutdown, the council has been running at full tilt to respond to the crisis, and like many organisations we have been able to operate effectively through remote meetings. Cabinet Members and senior officers have been working in this way for weeks. However, formal public meetings - such as public Cabinet meetings, or Council committees - have yet to work in this way. Government guidance making this possible - by relaxing the rules on, for example, the need for a quorum of Members to be physically present - was only published on 3 April. We have also had to work on ensuring that the more demanding technological requirements for a public meeting are in place. As Leader, I asked the Council's officers to undertake the necessary steps to make this possible and tomorrow the first meeting takes place.

The meeting will not be a formal public Cabinet, with full papers and agenda, but something of a hybrid: a public Cabinet briefing, comprising an updates from each Cabinet Member on recent activity within their portfolio, and an update from the Director of Public Health, Andrew Scott-Clark, followed by Cabinet Members answering questions put by non-executive Members.

The following Monday (27 April) will see a formal public Cabinet, for which the agenda has been published. 

You can find the link to tomorrow's meeting, and other details in this KCC media release.

MHCLG announces £1.6 billion for councils

Last week I wrote about the allocation of emergency Covid-19 funding to councils. Since then, the issue has remained high-profile, with councils highlighting the pressures that they face.

Today Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) announced a further £1.6 billion in funding for councils. This doubles the support previously announced, and was accompanied by a letter from the Communities Secretary to Council Leaders and Chief Executives praising the actions of councils and their workforce: "the unsung heroes as we tackle this virus."

This follows the government's earlier announcement that it was bringing forward £850 million in social care payments, and deferring councils' payments of £2.6 billion to central government relating to business rates. These are, however, timing differences in payments to assist cash flow; the £1.6 billion is additional money.

The sector, including the County Councils Network, has welcomed the announcement, while urging that, with major uncertainties regarding both revenues and expenditures, the need for support to councils must be kept under review. It is not yet clear how the funding will be allocated between councils; the MHCLG announcement says this will be communicated "as soon as practicable."

Eynsford Road flooding: still more to do

The small section of Eynsford Road set back from the main A225 and near the junction with Farningham High Street has been subject to flooding problems for many years. I have been trying to get the matter resolved and have written about it here before. Kent County Council drainage engineers have been working on the site on a number of occasions over the last two years and I have been present at a number of site meetings.

Measures taken so far include cleaning the gullies and building up the kerb to deflect water as it comes down the hill on the main road. These have yielded some relief but have proved ineffectual when - as has been the case so often - there has been heavy rainfall.  Officers have identified the system in and around South Hall Close as a likely source of the continuing problem, and have sought to investigate it. However, it has proved hard to investigate a drainage system  running through private land and which has been altered in the past without these alterations having been documented. 

Between January and early March, KCC spent a total of seven days excavating the unregistered lane to locate the pipe. However, it could not be found, leading the Drainage Engineer to believe that at some point a section of it may have been removed. A new job has been raised to return to site and excavate in South Hall Close, where the pipe is undoubtedly still in existence and to work back from there. Once engineers can see what has happened to the pipe, whether it has been removed or redirected, they can then plan how to reconnect it with the existing system. This work should be carried out within the next 28 days - subject, of course, to the possible impact on contractors of staff sickness or absence in self-isolation because of Covid-19.

Residents in Eysnford Road have had to endure many years of flood problems, and recent severe weather has made the problem more acute. Hopefully, the changes to the paperwork can be identified and a solution found.