A PROPOSED coach park and improvements to a city centre car park will no longer go ahead as planned as Winchester City Council tries to balance its books under the strain of Covid-19.

The council has been forced to revise its budget following the pandemic which has greatly reduced its income from parking, the Guildhall and fees, rents and charges.

It estimates that it will see a deficit of £10.7 million from its budget presented in February, just a month before the national lockdown was brought in. Most of that shortfall - nearly £6 million of it – is due a significant fall in parking income and a reduction in the collection of commercial rents.

The council has already made the decision to keep The Guildhall close for the next 12 months, with the future of 13 members of staff at risk.

But at a meeting of the full council more measures were approved, with all Conservative councillors present abstaining from the vote.

Cllr Neil Cutler, deputy leader and cabinet member for finance and risk, said: “When I presented the 20/2021 budget proposals, I expressed the concern that we were approaching a time of great uncertainty.

“My concerns at the time were more about the potential effects of a no deal Brexit but I did raise the possibility that coronavirus might cause some disruption.

“Because of that uncertainty our budget sort to address the long-term deficits bequeathed to us by the previous administration and we produced a balance budget for the next two years. I recall at the time that we were somewhat predictably attacked for adding to our reserves

“I certainly don’t claim great powers of foresight, but our budget left us in a stronger position with arguably the greatest challenge to our finances ever seen.”

The meeting was told that support from central Government will close the gap by £5.5million, with the rest coming from savings, deferrals and amendments to the capital programme.

But council leader Lucille Thompson hit out at Westminster saying that Government have “reneged on that promise” and have yet to transfer £3.8 million promised.

Questions arose from Tory members concerned about the council’s plan, with Cllr Steven Godfrey focussing in on the scrapping of a planned coach park and improvements to Chesil Street Car Park.

He said: “The current paper is already taken up pretty much all the available reserves that can be quickly use so our opportunity to invest in Winchester, to build up a war chest to help business and the community recover from the pandemic has already be whittled away by the paper before us which is unfortunate although there may be no alternatives.

“We have got the reserves at the moment which have been built up over a numbers of years and we must look and take action now to replace those with firms plans to invest in Winchester to help the community and to help the council.”

But Cllr Cutler said that the coach parking at South Park and Ride negates the need for a separate build and car park improvements will take place at a later date.

Savings have also come from a revision of the purchase of a housing company which has saved £1m, the releasing of agency staff and the review of service delivery.