With the new financial year only nine weeks away, the Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board for Plymouth Council is demanding the Government finally publish this year’s Public Health funding allocation.
Plymouth City Council is providing a range of services to help tackle Covid-19 infection rates, support the roll out of the vaccine and protect the vulnerable, yet Ministers have failed to publish the 2021/22 public health funding allocation – making detailed planning for the year ahead impossible.
The prolonged uncertainty comes at a time when councils across the country are facing wider budget cuts and pressure from central government to raise Council Tax by 5 per cent.
The Government has announced that Plymouth City Council’s Core Spending Power (not including public health budgets) will increase by just £9.338 million with £7.922 million of this rise expected to come from increasing Council Tax.
Issuing the call for Government to finally publish the figures, Councillor Kate Taylor, Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, and Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board for Plymouth Council, said:
“We are in the middle of the worst public health crisis in a hundred years, and yet the Government are forcing us to fight with one hand tied behind our back. The ongoing silence on public health is holding us back and that puts lives at risk. We need answers – now.
“From test and trace, to rolling out the vaccine, and now giving councils certainty in public health funding, the Government has repeatedly been too been slow to act, systems have failed, and lives have been lost.
“Council budgets have been ripped apart by the cost of Covid, and now the Government’s answer is to simply ask local people to pay more in their Council Tax, whilst risking a reduction in services.”
The Local Government Association, which represents councils, has said that Directors of Public Health and their teams desperately need certainty on how much they can budget for in 2021/22 to help their communities deal with the immediate impact of COVID-19.
According to LGA figures, public health funding grants to councils have been reduced by £700 million in real terms from 2015/16 to 2019/20. The lack of any new money for public health in the recent Spending Review will also likely lead to greater demand pressures on the NHS, which is already facing unprecedented challenges.