Issue - meetings

The Committee made the following comment on the self-isolation payment officer urgent decisions:

i.               Thought there had only been a few applications, which had resulted in grants being made. Questioned the role of the council in making grant payments.  Asked if the council was just imposing further conditions on top of national criteria or whether they were two different schemes.

The Benefit Manager responded:

i.               The scheme was broadly a national scheme, with nationally set criteria.  For people who were in receipt of benefits they could claim £500.

ii.             Local Authorities had been given a discretionary pot of funding to deliver a locally based scheme. There was only a short timeframe within which to devise the scheme.

iii.            Cambridge initially had low rates of infection and therefore there were few applications.

iv.           Officers had reviewed the criteria and had opened the scheme up to people on a specified income, which was broadly in line with criteria that other local authorities were applying.

v.             Central Government provided further funding in January 2021, officers reviewed the criteria and made changes.  This decision was done by an urgent officer decision so that the funding criteria could be available to members of the public as soon as possible. When the criteria were reviewed, applications which were previously refused were reviewed to see whether applicants but then able to access the grant funding.

vi.           The Council had to exercise care when awarding grant funding as once the funding pot had been used no further Central Government funding was expected. There was therefore a balance to be struck between ensuring that members of the public had access to funding but also ensuring that the grant fund was not spent all at once.   

The decision was noted.