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Dear Colleague,
As we all seek to do everything in our power to minimise the spread of COVID-19, it is in all our interests for the Government’s national plan to test and trace people for COVID-19 to work effectively. For many months, we have been arguing that this national coordination needs to be complemented by making the best use of councils’ unrivalled local knowledge, expert skills and vast experience of contact tracing.
It is therefore good news that the Government has today announced that the NHS Test and Trace programme will expand its support to local authorities in order to reach more people testing positive and their contacts. The announcement means local areas will have dedicated ring-fenced teams from the national service who will focus their work on specific local areas, alongside the relevant public health team.
The integrated national and local system combines the best of both worlds and means that specialist knowledge can be combined with the data required and additional resources from NHS Test and Trace. Councils have already made success of their own contact tracing programmes in Blackburn and Darwen, Luton and Leicester. This offer is now being extended to all councils with public health responsibilities.
Commenting on today’s announcement, our Chairman, Cllr James Jamieson, welcomed this enhanced partnership between national and local and stated the need to keep local resources under constant review. As always, it's the detail behind the announcement that will matter to councils. As I write, we're working with Carolyn Wilkins and colleagues in NHS Test and Trace on the design of the proposed approach to contact tracing.
Test and trace
Two weeks ago, a new business plan for NHS Test and Trace was launched giving a view of what is coming down the line, including around testing capacity and accessibility. Last week we co-hosted a workshop with the Association of Directors of Public Health and the Department of Health and Social Care for public health specialists to hear about and shape planned developments around local testing capabilities, including plans to design a service to supply directors of public health with a stock of testing kits. Attendees emphasised the importance of local areas determining the location and design of future test sites within their localities, and identified a number of elements which could help improve the end-to-end testing process.
You may find the materials from the session useful. They include a Q&A from the workshop, an update from learning from Portsmouth around their COVID-19 testing prototypes with their homeless community and University, and information about Local Test Sites including an induction pack, future pipeline plans and draft design under consideration. These can be found on the Testing, contact tracing and outbreak management Knowledge Hub.
Local restrictions
Over the weekend, you will have seen widespread coverage of the local public health messaging in the Preston area - “don’t kill granny” – as part of efforts to encourage residents to follow extra precautions to halt the spread of COVID-19. It followed Friday’s announcement by the Health and Social Care Secretary that Preston would face stricter restrictions, which included banning separate households from meeting each other at home. The measures brought Preston in line with parts of east Lancashire, the whole of Greater Manchester, parts of west Yorkshire and in Leicester where enhanced restrictions remain in force. The full list of individual areas covered by these further restrictions are detailed on the Government’s website.
Licensing
The media coverage over the weekend also featured our call for councils to be given tougher licensing powers to crack down on COVID-19 safety breaches in pubs and other licensed premises. This would see the introduction of a temporary public health or COVID-19 objective in the Licensing Act. We have also called for the Government’s safety guidance to be mandatory. Implementing both of these measures would mean councils can act quickly and proactively where the guidelines are not being followed, to help protect communities from the spread of infection.
Public transport
On Saturday, the Government announced emergency COVID-19 funding for buses and tram operators in England was being extended ahead of expected increases in demand next month. The funding will provide £218.4 million of support for bus services across the country over the next weeks, with rolling funding at up to £27.3 million per week afterwards. Tram and light railway services will also have access to up to £37.4 million over 12 weeks, at a rate of up to £3.1 million a week. In our response, we called for the Government to give councils oversight of local bus services, so we can ensure effective targeting of any public funding. The Department for Education also announced that it will provide £40 million funding to help councils provide home-to-school transport as children return to school from September.
Schools
As we look ahead to September and the national effort to return all children to schools, the Prime Minister said there was a “moral duty” to achieve this and that it was the “national priority” after months without in-person education. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Boris Johnson indicated that pubs, restaurants and shops would close ahead of schools in the event of any future local lockdowns.
Planning
Further to the Government’s significant planning announcements on Friday, today the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced that funding to help neighbourhood planning groups plan their local areas will double. Funding for groups in both urban (defined as ‘non-parished’ areas) and deprived areas (defined as being amongst the 20 per cent most deprived areas in England in accordance with the Index of Multiple Deprivation) will increase to £18,000. These groups will also have access to additional technical expertise free of charge.
Business support
Over the weekend, the Federation of Small Businesses estimated that £1.5 billion of emergency funding for businesses will go back to the Treasury at the end of the months if it is not claimed. Their analysis states that, of the 314 English councils distributing the money, 291 have at least one business entitled to support that has not received it. Meanwhile, as I shared in my bulletin on Friday, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s official figures show that, as of 3 August, councils' efforts mean that £10.8 billion has been paid out to businesses in relation to almost 883,000 properties. This represents 87.8 per cent of the total allocation and just over 92 per cent of the total number of properties identified by councils as eligible to receive the grants.
We continue to call for more time and flexibility in order for local authorities to ensure all businesses benefit from the funding and reiterated the excellent work councils have done to set up discretionary schemes and to distribute billions of pounds.
Outdoor events
We know that there has been some uncertainty about the extent to which outdoor events, particularly large events, are currently permitted to take place, with both councils and business organisations raising this issue with the LGA. We also know of concerns among councils at the prospect of festival type or very large events being organised in their areas. In response we have published a short guidance note for councils which brings together relevant guidance on outdoor events and provides an overview of the current position.
Shop Local Week
I know that many of you continue to work hard to make public spaces safe and to encourage your communities to support local businesses during the pandemic. You may be interested in the Government’s Shop Local Week (10 to 16 August) campaign which aims to help recover and rebuild from the pandemic. The Government is from today urging shoppers to visit their local high street and support businesses. The initiative is part of the Government’s Enjoy Summer Safely campaign, encouraging people to get back to the way of life they have missed, while following safety guidelines.
Supported living
The Department of Health and Social Care, and Public Health England, have published guidance for providers of supported living settings. This guidance aims to assist with planning and preparation so that local procedures can be put in place to minimise risk and provide the best possible support to people in supported living settings. It also covers safe systems of working, infection control and the use of PPE.
Long-term health impacts of COVID-19
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, has launched a comprehensive research study into the long-term health impacts of COVID-19. This will assess the impact on around 10,000 patients who have been hospitalised, with the study focusing on their health, recovery, possible ways to help improve their mental health and how individual characteristics influence their recovery, such as gender or ethnicity. The findings will support the development of new strategies for clinical and rehabilitation care, including personalised treatments.
Local government finances
From our regular conversations with councils across the country, it's crystal clear that we must continue to press the case for more short-term support relating to the financial pressures COVID-19 has produced, alongside our wider campaigning for longer-term financial sustainability and certainty for councils.
As part of the response to the COVID-19 financial outlook, the LGA commissioned LG Futures to review the likely council tax and business rates income implications of COVID-19, including analysing the effect of possible policy measures. This work is primarily based on the monthly financial management information returns currently being collected by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), supplemented with nationally available data sets on forecast business rates and council tax income. We have today published a summary presentation and a non-technical explanatory note on this work. We have also shared the work with MHCLG officials.
When speaking at our virtual annual conference back in early July, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick, announced that at the Spending Review the Government would publish details on the ‘fair apportionment’ of irrecoverable council tax and business rates losses, between central and local government, for 2020/21. MHCLG has also announced that there will be a phased repayment of council tax and business rates deficits over three years, rather than requiring complete repayment of deficits next year. This will help, but we continue to lobby for the government to fully compensate councils’ for all irrecoverable income losses. This LG Futures work aims to feed into this campaigning activity, as well as to inform government decisions on the design of any support schemes.
I hope this update is helpful as you and your teams start the week. As always, if you have any specific concerns or insights that you think we should be aware of please, do let us know by sharing your views with your Principal Adviser. This helps to inform our work with government on your behalf, and shapes our direct support for councils.
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Best wishes,
Mark Lloyd
Chief Executive
Local Government Association
@MarkLloydLGA
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