Crawley council to create £600,000 Covid reserve

The money – totalling £604,121.55 – will be taken from reserves previously earmarked for other uses and placed in a Covid-19 Support Reserve.

Just over £13,500 of that had been set aside for work on the market and concerns were raised by a number of councillors about the decision to use it elsewhere.

At a meeting fo the Overview & Scrutiny Commission, leader Peter Lamb was told that the market traders often felt ‘marginalised’ and it was ‘a little bit mean’ to take the money.

We live in interesting times, though, and Mr Lamb made it perfectly clear where the council’s priorities have to lay.

He said: “Right at the moment we’re in the middle of a pandemic and we’re freeing up money that’s not being used right now and can’t be used right now because we’re stuck dealing with this.

“At some point in the future we will have to work out what the best thing to do is with the market – if it remains a viable going concern by that point in time.

“We’re at least a year away from things returning to normal and being able to plan to take decisions about things like that.”

While insisting that the council had done its best to help the market, his views on its condition were blunt.

He said: “The reality is if the public really, really wanted them they would go out and use them and then they wouldn’t be struggling.

“The reason they’re struggling is because times are changing, demand is dropping and people want to shop in other ways.”

The rest of the money placed in the new reserve includes £294,630, which had been set aside to cover redundancy payments but was not needed; £82,273.26 for emergencies and work to damaged walls and bridges; and £75,000 which had been earmarked for grants to voluntary organisations.

Crawley has been hammered by the pandemic, with a report from the Centre for Cities think tank predicting it would be the worst affected town in the UK with 53,000 of 94,000 jobs at risk.

Things are unlikely to improve over the next few years.

At a meeting of the full council, members discussed the Budget Strategy for 2021/22 – 2025/26 – a precursor to the actual budget, which will be set in February.

The strategy predicted a £2.5m shortfall in 21/22 if council tax on Band D homes was increased by £4.95 – 2.37 per cent.

The budget gap is expected to stay over £2m for the next five year up to 2025/26, during which time the council aims to gradually balance it as well as putting money back into its depleted reserves as and when it can.

Conservative leader Duncan Crow said the council was right to exercise ‘caution and flexibility’ given the ongoing uncertainties.

He added: “We’re hopeful things will get better.

“People are starting to be vaccinated and if things go particularly well things could be much, much better from later next year.

“But we can’t be certain of that at this time and therefore it is right to have that flexibility to be able to not necessarily bow to budget in any given year as long as we are doing so over a four-year period.”

Pleased with the idea of putting money back into the reserves, he said: “We’ve had quite a few rainy days but I suspect we’ve got a few more to come.”