Dorchester Town Council pandemic savings to help Citizen Advice
Cancelled activities have lead to a £50,000 saving
Last updated 8th May 2021
DORCHESTER town council is to spend some of the savings it made during the year to help the Citizens Advice Bureau.
The authority ended the year £50,000 better off than expected on its annual budget of around £1.5million.
Some of the savings came from not being able to run many of the activities it would normally have done although in other areas the pandemic has cost it more.
Among the reductions in income were a drop in market fees and income from hiring the Municipal Buildings while personal protective gear and having to buy laptops for home working added £18,000 to the council’s bills.
The town council’s annual meeting heard that Covid had delayed the Cornhill refurbishment and Poundbury cemetery wall but had allowed the re-vamp of the Municipal Buildings to be accelerated.
The meeting voted to agree a request from the Citizens Advice Bureau for funding to help it meet the costs of additional advisors for a small specialist employments rights team which had been set up to deal with an increasing number of cases.
In its first five months the unit helped 85 clients with employment issues, 30 per cent of them from Dorchester.
Cllr Janet Hewitt was amongst those to support the additional grant, which could amount to £13,600.
“It’s absolutely crucial. We haven’t seen the worst of it yet as various Government schemes start to come to an end,” she said.
Praising the work of the CAB she said that in the last few months she had referred 21 local families to the bureau for help.