Agenda item

1.            Mr P J Oakford paid tribute to the immense amount of work undertaken by County Council staff, at very short notice, in setting up test centres and temporary mortuary facilities. This work was a vital part of Kent’s successful response to the covid-19 crisis and he wished this to be acknowledged.

2.            Mr Shipton introduced the report and highlighted key points of the national and local context, Kent’s share of national funding totals and the decisions which had been taken about how to spend Kent’s allocated funding. Some ring-fenced grants had conditions attached to them, two further tranches of grant funding were expected later in the 2021/22 financial year and it was assumed that all of these would need to be spent in full within that year, leaving no reserve to carry forward. Since the start of the current lockdown in November 2020, funding had been received from the Contain Outbreak Management Fund (COMF), and authority had been delegated to the Director of Public Health to decide how to spend public health grants, for example, to manage asymptomatic testing. Additional funding would be forthcoming in the 2021/22 financial year to help support Council Tax income.

3.            Mr Shipton, Ms Cooke, Mr Oakford and Mr Watts responded to comments and questions from the committee, including the following:-

a)    the clarity and depth of the information in the report was commended as very helpful for Members, and officers were thanked for their diligence in presenting relevant information to keep Members up to date. Conveying timely information clearly to the public was also important;  

b)    asked how the funding allocation to support the extremely vulnerable was calculated, as a range of figures had been quoted in reports to different committees, Ms Cooke undertook to check and advise Members outside the meeting.  Mr Shipton advised that authorities who had been in Tier 4 before the current lockdown had been allocated extra funding;

c)    asked about the policy on one-off spends, Mr Oakford advised that any Member could put forward suggestions for use of funds;  

d)    asked about the Helping Hands project, Mr Oakford advised that a report setting out details of the scheme would be presented to full Council on 11 March 2021;

e)    the report did not seem to mention the role of the NHS in managing the pandemic, but the impact of County Council decisions on the NHS and its resources, and its relationship with the NHS, would need to be monitored carefully. Ms Cooke advised that the County Council and the NHS received separate funding streams from Central Government, and, although each followed its own procurement regulations, they would work closely together with joint procurement;

f)     asked about the governance of and process for disbursement of funding, Ms Cooke advised that the process would depend on the delegation set out in a key decision, for example, for the Helping Hands scheme.  Longer-term projects would need a sequence of key decisions to manage a phased implementation.  COMF had been extended to the 2021/22 financial year so would need a second key decision. She undertook to share details of the officer delegation framework and related governance with Members outside the meeting; and

g)    asked about the governance supporting the recruitment of community wardens, Mr Watts advised that this had been covered by a key decision and, if a small change needed to be made to the scheme, this could be covered by an officer decision. Officer delegations allowed officers to determine how to spend ring-fenced grants.  Ms Cooke added that, if the ring-fencing of the funding were to be discontinued, a new key decision would be required to establish new delegations.   

4.            It was RESOLVED that the information set out in the report be noted, with thanks.