Arun council could have responded better to coronavirus with ‘hindsight’

An inconsistency in internal and external communications, the lack of an Arun-based community hub, and being slow to make support payments to local businesses have been among criticisms aimed at the council.

At a meeting of the cabinet last week, Nigel Lynn, chief executive officer, said officers had been working ‘flat out to deal with day-to-day issues’, adding: “Hindsight is a clearly wonderful thing but there are some things I think we could have done better.”

Regarding the business grants he pointed out that the government had changed its guidance five times in the space of a few days ‘which didn’t help matters’ and that the council only had a certain number of staff trained to do the necessary work.

He said: “Although we understood what the issue was, we didn’t believe there was anything we could do in the short-term to resolve that position.”

The meeting was told the council had paid £27.8m in grants to 2,335 businesses, along with £480,000 of hardship grants.

Mr Lynn insisted that working with West Sussex County Council had been ‘the best way forward’ when it came to the community hub.

He said: “After that initial hiccup, the way we worked with the county – particularly the way they triaged things and making sure that people didn’t fall between the cracks in terms of not being helped – was really important.”

Conservative leader Shaun Gunner pointed out that all three issues had been raised early by his group, and questioned whether the opposition’s views had been taken seriously.

He also accused cabinet members of only playing a ‘peripheral’ role in things.

Leader Dr James Walsh said: “All cabinet members have been involved with discussions with the relevant officers all the way through the emergency.

“This attempt to portray the cabinet as not having been working during this is completely erroneous and I refute it utterly.”

Mr Gunner responded by asking if the cabinet would ‘work with the opposition on the ideas for how we take this district forward and help the people and businesses recover from coronavirus’.

The answer was “Most certainly – 100 per cent.”

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