Council leader Richard Watts: ‘If this crisis carries on for months and months and into next year, then the bill will be even bigger’

THE Town Hall is facing the prospect of having more than £40million wiped off its budget by the coronavirus crisis.

Islington council leader Labour councillor Richard Watts warned “difficult decisions” will have to be made if more funding is not made available by the government.

So far £15million has arrived from Whitehall since the outbreak began, but Cllr Watts said this would not cover the extra expense of responding to the crisis.

That response has gone on despite 15 to 20 per cent of the council’s staff having been absent for various reasons, including virus symptoms, at some point since the crisis began.

Speaking to the Tribune, Town Hall leader Richard Watts, who also chairs the Local Government Association’s (LGA) resources board, said the council was prepared for the long haul amid the uncertainty of when normality will resume, and insisted no funding decisions had yet been made.

But he added: “Looking at the current rate the crisis will cost Islington council something north of £40million for the rest of the financial year, and there will probably be an impact for longer than that.”.

“We’ve had £15million from the government. It demonstrates the scale of the gap in the government’s efforts between what they are giving us and what we need.”

Last week, Cllr Watts sent a letter to Boris Johnson outlining his concerns, and asked the Prime Minister to honour his commitment to supporting local authorities through the crisis.

“I think we’re going to have to keep campaigning,” he said.

“The government has said it will stand by us, and the Chancellor has said he will do what it takes. I would hope it would be as good as it’s word.

“But clearly this is a massive financial shock on top of 10 years of austerity.

“If this crisis carries on for months and months and into next year, then the bill will be even bigger.

“The biggest challenge for the council is that we’re not just spending more money than we usually would on vital services, but we’re losing money from income we’ve been increasingly reliant on.”

Cllr Watts said the council’s spending commitments and savings outlined in its budget could be affected – a £1.1 billion budget was signed off recently.

“We haven’t been able to make the savings we wanted and we haven’t been able to start the new projects we wanted,” he said.

“Some of the money we put aside has been spent in other ways than we imagined.

“We simply don’t know how this is changing the situation for many of the services that we deliver. Is the old way of doing things the right way in a post-lockdown world?”

Speaking about staff absences, Cllr Watts said he was proud his “incredible” staff were still able to deliver services with that level of staffing.

Council meetings resumed last week, with planning meetings and executive meetings held in public via video calls for the first time since the lockdown.

“It will be interesting to see how we can do it in the future,” added Cllr Watts.