What we're doing to help Wirral West and South get through this...

Local Conservative Councillors and Campaigners are focused on supporting our local communities across Wirral West and South

The latest restrictions (in force from Thursday 5th November ) can be found here

If you need our help, and the information page is not what you are looking for, contact us - our details can be found here

Action to help children

• Universal Credit, which we have increased by £1,000 for families this year, provides support to families all year round.
• £63 million has been provided to councils including Wirral to provide emergency assistance to families with food, essentials and meals.
• Ensuring children who are eligible for free school meals continue to receive free school meals if required to self isolate
• Temporarily extending free school meals to families who have no recourse to public funds
• Establishing a £1 Billion Covid catch up plan to help schools provide additional support to children most impacted by the pandemic
• We are making £650 million available in 2020-21 to states schools across England to help head teachers provide extra support to children who have fallen behind, allowing them to decide how to spend the funding through targeted interventions.
• At the same time, we are putting £350 million towards high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged children, accelerating their progress and narrowing the education attainment gap.
• Backed by £9 million, our Holiday Activities and Food Programme helped up to 50,000 disadvantaged children
• We also extended our successful Breakfast Club programme, offering children healthy breakfasts

• Almost 1,200 laptops have been provided to children who don't have access to laptops or broadband at home to help them to continue to learn if they cannot attend school

• Details of local help available in Wirral over the half term can be found here and here is more information

  For more information on what is being done to support vulnerable people nationally, click here

Action to support the lowest paid and unemployed:

• The National Living Wage was increased in April by 6.2%, meaning a full time worker will receive a pay rise of £930 this year

• Working Tax Credits have also been increased - the basic element has been increased by up to £20 a week. Child benefit and other tax credit rates have also been increased - see here

• Nearly £1 billion of additional support for renters, through increases in housing benefit and Universal Credit. From April, Local Housing Allowance rates will pay for at least 30% of market rents in each area

  For more information on what is being done to support incomes of the lowest paid and out of work nationally, click here

Action for our NHS and care sector:

• Wirral Council has given every care home at extra £200 for every council-client to cover additional food and cleaning materials. We are also co-ordinating requests from them for Personal Protective Equipment ('PPE')
• We have increased the pay for care workers to meet the Real Living Wage of £9.30 per hour to recognise the importance of this work and to attract more people to choose this as their career
• The National Action Plan for Social Care can be found here and includes updated information on the use of PPE

For more information on what is being done to support our NHS and care services nationally, click here

Action to support shops and small businesses:

• Business Rates for most businesses have been cancelled this year, with the Government making up the money councils would have received
• New measures to protect the High Street from aggressive rent collection and closure
• Water Plus, the company that now supplies most non-household customers, is offering a payment holiday
• Following Wirral being placed in Tier Three controls, a Local Restriction Support Fund has been set up to help businesses most affected. Click here
• To find out what help is available to YOUR business, click here

For more information on what is being done to support businesses and jobs nationally, click here

Action to help community groups and charities:

• The Government has published a package of measures to support for voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to respond to coronavirus (COVID-19) - click here for details
• Following our request, Wirral Council is re-opening applications for small grants of money to support community and voluntary groups at this time. The 'Ward Member Budgets' are overseen by individual councillors. Contact your councillor to ask for a grant for your organisation
• If members of your community group, association or society would like to volunteer to help others at this time, please register with the Wirral Infobank via this link

For more information on the help announced by the Chancellor for charities click here