Recommendation 26

The absence of contingency plans contributed to the scramble at the start of the pandemic, with knock-on effects much further down the line. HM Treasury told us that it had to create a function to pay business grants from scratch within around 10 working days and linked this to the weakness or absence of early guidance on grant repayment arrangements.62 DBT told us that the initial focus on speed “framed all of the decisions then that cascaded through in terms of scheme design and implementation.”63 There were not any trusted arrangements enabling engagement with most authorities prior to schemes being announced, leaving local authorities facing queries from local businesses they were not able to answer.64 HM Treasury graphically described the situation the government found itself in part-way through the pandemic: doing their best to respond to unforeseen issues, taking reactive decisions following epidemiological developments, without guidance ready to enable anyone to deal with questions from businesses about how they would or wouldn’t be supported.65