Recommendation 6

The government did not have in place a plan for how it would provide support to businesses during a national emergency like the pandemic. At the time the pandemic started there were no contingency plans in place between central and local government on how to provide support to businesses. HM Treasury, BEIS and local authorities therefore had to react in the absence of pre-agreed processes. Local authorities were often not aware of new schemes until they were publicly announced, leaving them to field questions from local businesses without being in a position to provide ready answers. Lessons began to be learned as the pandemic unfolded, for example the Department’s creation of a programme board in 2021 which included representatives from local government, but all this took time. The Department acknowledges that there are lessons to learn and informed us that it is feeding into Cabinet Office’s wider consideration of lessons learnt. Recommendation 6: The Department for Business and Trade, working together with other relevant departments and local authorities, should develop a contingency plan for how it would respond should it be asked to provide financial support to businesses and other groups should a situation analogous to the pandemic occur in the future. The Department also needs to do better to understand the capability of local government systems when considering future schemes. 8 Local authority administered COVID support schemes in England 1 Implementation challenges