|
Welcome to the NAG and SOPO newsletter for 18 September August 2020. Feel free to circulate to your colleagues.
This newsletter is now delivered through our corporate service that handles all our various e-bulletins.
Manage or create a subscription - read our previous bulletins.
Business grants
The Government has confirmed that businesses in England that are required to shut because of local interventions will now be able to claim grant support. To be eligible for the grant, a business must have been required to close due to local COVID-19 restrictions for three weeks or more.
Local authorities will be responsible for administering the scheme. Councils will receive a 5 per cent top-up to deal with businesses affected who are not on the rating list and they will be paid up to £1500.
Further details, including eligibility and the mechanics of the grant, will be contained in guidance which is expected to be published shortly by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Social care providers
The Director for Social Care Delivery at DHSC has written to care home providers highlighting the increasing rate of COVID-19 infection across social care providers, particularly among staff. It urges vigilance in addressing this and highlights the importance in particular of testing and correct use of PPE. The letter acknowledges the recent delays in turning round test results and sets out the steps taken to address this. Councils are working hard with local providers to support infection control, and particularly in care homes in line with agreed Care Home Support Plans if there is anything you think we should be aware of please email adass.lga.covid@local.gov.uk.
Care providers will be given an extra £546 million to bolster infection control and help protect people who use care services and the workforce that delivers care throughout winter. The fund will help care providers pay staff full wages when they are self-isolating and help enable staff to work in only one care home, reducing the risk of spreading the infection. The government says that this brings total funding for infection control in care homes to £1.1 billion. Responding, we welcomed the funding but made clear it needs to be supported by action on other key issues, such as testing and PPE supply.
Schools
An online portal is now live for schools and further education (FE) providers to order additional coronavirus (COVID-19) test kits if they have run out, or are running out, of their initial 10 kits supplied for use in line with Government guidance. They will help schools and colleges get their symptomatic staff who test negative back to work as soon as they feel well enough, to ensure the continuity of education for pupils and students. The Department of Health and Social Care will be holding a webinar on how to use the testing kits, which you can sign up for on the Government’s website.
DfE has also published guidance for education and childcare settings on the process for managing confirmed positive cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) when the individual is known to have been in a school, college or early years setting.
Non-COVID stories
Affordable Homes Programme
The Government has also published information on how councils can apply for the Affordable Homes Programme 2021 to 2026. The guidance provides an overview of the standard tenures and types of housing supported. Notably social rent homes can be funded within areas of high affordability challenge, and also now elsewhere provided that the grant requested is not higher than it would be for Affordable Rent. Local authorities, amongst other organisations, can apply for funding as an individual body or as part of a partnership or consortium. We previously set out the ways in which councils can play our part in delivering more social housing in our media response to the announcement of this programme launching.
Funding for public sector property projects
At the Chartered Institute for Housing (CiH) Housing 2020 Virtual Festival, Cabinet Office Minister, Lord Agnew announced that One Public Estate (OPE) has launched a new £10 million funding round. The programme is delivered in partnership between the Office of Government Property in Cabinet Office, the LGA, and MHCLG and is inviting applications from new and existing partnerships to bring forward collaborative public sector property projects. The new funding is alongside an additional £20 million of Land Release Fund from MHCLG, which will also be delivered through OPE. This will provide capital funding to release surplus council-owned property for housing development. Further information can be found in the OPE prospectus for 2020.
Lessons from economic and transport partnerships
Building back better and levelling up opportunities in the coming months and years will require partnership working at local, pan-regional and national levels. The LGA has launched a report with MetroDynamics looking at the lessons learned from the experience of established and emerging economic and transport partnerships working at a sub-national level. The report also outlines several principles, drawn from the research, suggesting how sub-national bodies could evolve in the context of further devolution and economic resilience.
Webinars
Children’s Social Care and the Spending Review - 29 September 2020
This event will look at what level of funding is needed for children's social care, what the right balance is between early intervention and crisis support and which of the changes made in response to the crisis should be kept.
Children’s Social Care and the Spending Review
Protecting the public purse - 29 September 2020
Looking at the recent MHCLG review of fraud in local authority procurement – with speakers from the team lead writing the report - this is an opportunity to understand best practice to reduce fraud in local authority procurement, particularly in the current environment.
Further information about the protecting the public purse webinar
CIPFA: Getting Better Value from ICT Tenders -29 September 2020
A webinar will support practitioners deliver ICT tenders on time and within budget. Almost every public body is spending heavily on ICT to cope with the “new normal” and as part of digital by default transformation. This webinar will discuss some of the key areas where organisations have experienced difficulties achieving original ICT expectations.
For further details and to book your place, please visit CIPFA's website
Decarbonisation of transport webinars
In relation to the Decarbonising transport briefings, the LGA are hosting a webinar to accompany each briefing. See the full list of Decarbonisation of Transport webinars below:
LGA Behaviour Change webinar - 2 October 2020
As the UK looks forward to ‘build back better, local authorities are exploring opportunities to create more resilient communities and address a range of environmental and socio-economic issues, against a backdrop of huge economic pressures.
Drawing on the work of The Centre for Climate and Social Transformations (CAST) and recent studies of lockdown behaviour the webinar will focus on behaviour change and engagement with communities, drawing on examples from local authorities.
|
