Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what resources his Department plans to provide to Local Authorities organising elections for May 2021 to ensure that those elections are carried out in a covid secure way.

My Department and the Cabinet Office have been working together with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, the Local Government Association, and Public Health England, to identify and resolve challenges presented by the impact of Covid-19 to the delivery of the local and mayoral elections in England and the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales in May 2021.

In the Spending Review we are making available £1.55 billion to local authorities to support the costs of Covid-19 in 2021-22. We have also received specific requests for additional Covid related local election costs to be supported. We will set out more detail about the £1.55 billion in due course.