Jenrick confirms allocations of £1 billion funding for councils this winter

Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick has today (22 October 2020) confirmed allocations for individual councils from the £1 billion of additional support announced by the Prime Minister earlier this month.

Over £900 million of this funding will be provided to councils for their ongoing work to support communities during the pandemic. It brings the total funding given to councils since the start of the pandemic, to help with spending pressures, to £5.7 billion including a £1.1 billion Infection Control Fund.

To address the ongoing challenges local authority leisure centres are facing, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has also confirmed today £100 million will be used to introduce a new fund which will support council leisure centres most in need. Further details on the scheme will be set out shortly.

These funds are part of an unprecedented package of support for councils, which also includes up to £465 million through the new Local Alert Level system, £300 million to support Test and Trace and £30 million for enforcement and compliance. Councils can also claim funding through a compensation scheme for lost income from sales, fees and charges.

Local Government Secretary Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP said:

Since the start of the pandemic, we have backed local councils with the funding they need to support their communities, protect vital services and recover lost income.

This extra £1 billion funding will ensure that councils have the resources that they need over the winter and continue to play an essential role on the front line of our response to the virus while protecting the most vulnerable and supporting local businesses.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said:

It’s vital that we keep ourselves fighting fit through the winter months and local authority leisure centres are crucial to this. This £100 million fund will help keep leisure centres across the country open. I urge leisure centres to bid for the money and people to make the most of these precious local facilities.

Spending pressure funding has been allocated based on levels of population and deprivation, whilst also considering the amount of funding each council has received from the government so far. All councils will receive a minimum of £100,000.

Recognising that councils are best placed to decide how to meet pressures in their local area, this funding has not been ringfenced. The government has asked councils use this funding to prioritise the running of vital services and protecting the most vulnerable and public health.

Further information

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is working closely with Sport England and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the design of the £100 million scheme for local authority leisure centres. Further details will be released shortly.

Over £900 million will be provided to councils for spending pressures. View the allocations of this funding on GOV.UK.

In July we announced an unprecedented guarantee that the devolved administrations would receive at least £12.7 billion in additional resource funding this year to help them respond to Covid-19.

We have now uplifted that by £1.3 billion, to at least £14 billion. This means a total increase this year of at least £7.2 billion for the Scottish Government, £4.4 billion for the Welsh Government and £2.4 billion for the Northern Ireland Executive, on top of their Spring Budget 2020 funding.

It is for the devolved administrations to decide how to use this funding irrespective of how UK Government provides support in England.