Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans his Department has to compensate local authorities for loss of revenue from car parking receipts during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Government is aware of the impact on local authorities’ financial position as a result of Covid-19. We are collecting monitoring data on a monthly basis on income and expenditure. We will share a summary of the returns in due course. I would like to encourage local authorities to keep engaging with us through the second round of returns, which will provide valuable data about what is happening on the front-line.

On 28 April the Local Government Secretary announced allocations to individual local authorities of the additional £1.6 billion of funding to support councils in delivering essential front line services, that was announced on 18 April. The grant has been paid as an un-ringfenced amount, recognising local authorities are best placed to decide how to meet the additional Covid-19 service pressures in their area. This funding is in addition to the £1.6 billion announced on 19 March.

The Government has made a commitment to support all authorities with the additional cost pressures from the extra work and the specific tasks we have asked them to carry out as a result of the pandemic, including in relation to social care – both adult and children’s, public health services, shielding the most vulnerable, homelessness and rough sleeping, supporting the NHS and managing excess deaths.