City of York Council leader backs £1,000 increase to carer's allowance
Cllr Keith Aspden has been speaking to us in our exclusive #LeadersinLockdown interview.
WATCH: Keith Aspden answers your questions in our exclusive #LeadersInLockdown interview from 7pm on March 18th
City of York's Council Leader Keith Aspden is backing calls for a £1,000 increase in the carer's allowance.
He's been answering your questions as part of our leaders in lockdown special.
One of the issues put to him was the risk of carers being left behind by the pandemic, a story we covered earlier this week when we spoke to Katherine Macy.
In response, Cllr Aspden said: "I think unpaid carers and carers have done a huge amount during the pandemic, and have been some of the unsung heroes for the amount of work that they do supporting individuals, families and communities.
"My party (the Liberal Democrats) have launched a national campaign to say that carer's allowance should go up by a thousand pounds - that's not enough, but at least it's a start.
"I'm really proud in York that we have the York Carer's Centre, which makes sure that carers get support and advice. What we need to make sure that we can do is keep investing in carer's support locally whilst lobbying nationally for that extra support".
City of York Council recently passed its budget for 2021/22, which included reductions of £8 million to help balance the books. Cllr Aspden says: "We passed our Council budget very recently, and it's one of the hardest budgets that we've had to pass in a long time.
"What we did do is make sure that the vast majority of that £8 million are what I would call back office costs, such as savings from staff and doing things differently in our buildings.
"It's enabled us to invest in particular in adult social care and children's social care, which actually gained money. It's also maintained money on those services that residents expect to see, such as street environment services, waste collection and measures to protect the cultural and business sector".