Agenda item

In accordance with the provisions of the Officer Scheme of Delegation in the Council’s Constitution, this report updates the Cabinet on the decisions taken by Officers to incur expenditure or take urgent action in response to the Coronavirus emergency.

The Chairman introduced this item and stated that when major emergencies occurred, such as the present Coronavirus crisis, officers were able to make urgent decisions and report back to Members at a later date, as set out in the Council’s Constitution. 

Almost daily Emergency Planning Team meetings had been held over recent weeks, whereby a team of officers, led by the Director of Services, had been dealing with the emergency and the Chairman expressed his thanks to that team.  He also took the opportunity to thank Council staff who had continued to work diligently, mostly from home, to ensure the Council continued to provide services to its communities and that they were provided with the information they needed during the Coronavirus emergency.

As the pandemic continued, the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) had set up a series of communication processes to ensure Members were kept up to date, whilst acknowledging that, for the first few weeks at least, things had been changing on an almost daily basis. As part of this process, the CEO had had regular discussions with the Leader and Deputy Leader, as well as weekly meetings with the other three political Group Leaders, Councillors  Chapman, Dixon and Mrs Thurston. The CEO had also had many conversations with individual Councillors and, through these various communications, had discussed decisions being made by officers as they occurred.  Support had therefore been obtained from the four Group Leaders at the relevant time prior to the decisions in the report being taken.

            The Chief Executive then presented the report and drew attention to the fact that the Directors, Group Heads and himself had authority to make urgent decisions in emergency situations under powers set out in the Council’s Constitution.  He thanked the Leader, the Cabinet and the other three Group Leaders for their full support on every decision that had been taken as, without that support, the task of officers would have been far more difficult.

            Three decisions, in particular were highlighted by the Chief Executive, namely:-

(i)     The substantial distribution of business grants – the Government had provided £39m and, as of 28 May 2020, £18,825 had been distributed to small businesses, a percentage of 63.77.  It was anticipated that the remainder of the eligible grant funding would go out in the next few days.

(ii)    Freedom Leisure had requested financial support as it was a Trust and did not have a large financial holding; assistance was therefore required to enable it to survive.  The Council had provided support in respect of the management fee; keeping the building safe; and staffing costs and how repayment might be managed was being looked at and might include the extension of the present contract.

(iii)   £13,000 had been outlayed to provide partitioning at the Bognor Regis and Littlehampton Reception areas to enable members of the public to still be able to access the offices and yet keep members of staff safe.  The work had been done by the Facilities Team during the first weekend of lockdown.

Before opening the debate, the Chairman advised that, right from the beginning of the emergency and in consultation with the CEO, the following   main priorities had been identified irrespective of what support came from central Government or elsewhere and these were:

·         To deal with the homeless, rough sleepers and domestic abuse and violence cases and provide accommodation, which had been provided by Butlins.

·         To introduce a commercial rent holiday on properties leased from the Council and to defer payments for 3 months plus giving tenants longer to pay of up to 1 year and, in extreme situations, up to 2 years.

·         To make car parks free and to not enforce single yellow lines across the District.

·         In the event of staff sickness/absence the waste, recycling and green collection services would be subject to cascading but, after an initial glitch at the beginning, the service was running normally. 

The Chairman thanked his Cabinet Member colleagues for their contribution and involvement in discussions with officers.

As there was no debate from the Cabinet, the Chairman turned to questions from other Members who had submitted these prior to the meeting.  The Committee Services Manager clarified that a full schedule of questions, answers and supplementary questions and answers would be attached to the signed copy of the Minutes and would also be uploaded to the website as a separate document following the meeting.  The Chairman sought and received support from the Cabinet that questions asked at the meeting should be in line with the procedure for virtual meetings and that there would not be an opportunity for Members to participate in a general question and answer session.

The Cabinet then

RESOLVED

That the action taken by officers be noted and supported.