FROME Town Council has reported that it may have to “reduce expenditure” if it does not receive emergency funding from the government.
Due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the town council has applied for £70,000 of emergency funding from the government via Mendip District Council.
As long as the application is successful, the town council says that it will remain “financially sound with adequate funds and assets”.
However, if unsuccessful, the town council says it will need to “reduce expenditure” in the second half of the year, and/or “dip into” its ‘general reserves’ to balance the budget at the end of the financial year.
“We need to be very careful with our spending in the coming months,” explained Frome Town Council’s business manager, Sarah Williams and finance administrator, Hannah Paniccia, in a report to councillors.
Their report also said, “At the July 2020 Council Matters, we reported that our year end forecast revisions had begun almost at the beginning of the financial year due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“We initially identified £70k of emergency funding as being required and had submitted a request to Mendip District Council (MDC) who subsequently requested more detail. Additional costs have since been identified by the pandemic recovery panels during the summer and we have had to review our planned work programme for 2020-21 to try to incorporate both emergency and recovery tasks.
“At the time of writing, we continue to wait for an answer from MDC and are not in a position to accurately re-forecast the financial year end position to March 2020.”
Councillors will meet in the near future to discuss suggestions for the council’s work programme and budget revisions for the remainder of the financial year. They will begin planning for a budget for 2021/22.
