THE leader of BCP Council has said she fears councils may be forced to fill multi-million pound funding shortfalls, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, themselves.

Councillor Vikki Slade said the council had been told to “spend what you need” by the government in March but that it now may not be compensated for a £30 million financial gap caused by lockdown measures.

She said her “biggest fear” was the responsibility being passed onto the council through lifting the cap on how much council tax can be increased in a single year.

The council has been awarded grants totalling about £22 million to cover the cost of work, including the establishment of a temporary mortuary. But even after this, it is forecasting a £30 million shortfall.

Its chief executive, Graham Farrant, said he was involved in a conference call with local government secretary Robert Jenrick in March during which councils were told they would not face “financial problems” as a result of their coronavirus response.

He said this position had now been changed with the government seemingly no longer willing to address lost income.

“We have a level of reserves but finding £30 million in year is a huge ask,” he said. “The net budget this year is £283 million, most of that is committed on the social care services so it’s really difficult to find those savings.”

More than 30 per cent of the council’s income is from sources that are not council tax, business rates or directly from the government – the fourth highest proportion of any local authority in the country.

Cllr Slade said the council had been caught out by the change of position from the government.

“When you’re told that the funding will be sorted and then half way through the process the language changes, that’s not ideal,” she said.

“They were saying ‘spend what you need, do what you need to do, we will support you’, two weeks later they say it will be a shared responsibility.

“From that day onwards, council leaders of every colour and chief executives of every type of council have suddenly realised that the world has changed.”

She said that despite the pressures there were no plans to change the approach of equalising council tax across the three towns in two years.

But she said she “feared” the cap on council tax increases could be lifted because, she said, that would get the government “off the hook”.

She said this would force “even more hardship” on the public through local taxation and would “destroy trust”.