Plymouth City Council leader Tudor Evans is calling for the Government to re-think its announcement of a 14 per cent cut to the city’s Covid-19 funding.
Plymouth’s latest allocation towards Covid-19 costs announced last night is 14 per cent less than its previous allocation, despite increasing demands to support some of the city’s most vulnerable residents at the same time as the council has lost many of its other sources of income.
Councillor Evans said: “This latest allocation from the Government is an outrage given the impact that Covid-19 is having on our communities and the city as a whole.
“Plymouth is receiving only £7.2 million – 14 per cent less than its previous allocation, which was also well short of our actual costs in providing critical services during Covid-19.
“The total Covid-19 funding for Plymouth is only around 25 per cent of what we actually need, which will further increase the pressures we were already experiencing due to ongoing underfunding – especially now the Government has postponed its funding review.
“The Government seems to have allocated this critical funding purely on population and without taking any notice of need. So urban areas such as Plymouth are being hit, despite the needs of residents being higher, while better off areas and districts, which do not provide social care or support care homes, are getting increased allocations.
“Councils such as Plymouth are in the frontline of supporting their communities through this pandemic, whether through our work to support care homes, securing critical supplies of protective equipment for key workers or getting food and medicines out to elderly and unwell residents.
“The timing couldn’t be worse. Care homes are facing huge pressures and seeing an increasing number of residents with Covid-19, while the Government had only just given us extra duties to ensure that those vulnerable people it missed off its original data are traced and supported.
“We are asking our MPs to press the case for Covid-19 funding to be urgently reviewed and increased.”