Officials may start storing fuel as part of a contingency plan to tackle soaring costs.
The Iran war has caused fuel prices to rapidly increase over the last few weeks – with unleaded petrol costing a national average of £1.57 per litre for unleaded and £1.90 for diesel, according to the RAC Fuelwatch, writes Local Democracy Reporter Oliver Castle.
At a South Holland District Council (SHDC) cabinet meeting on Tuesday, April 28, leader Nick Worth asked how the council was preparing for the knock-on effect of this, stating: “What sort of plans are we starting to put in place in a worst case scenario?”
Russell Stone, executive director for finance at the South and East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership, explained that the council is currently ‘capturing information’ around the possible impacts to the authority and is putting plans in place to mitigate these risks.
He said some matters were ‘fairly immediate and fairly obvious’ in terms of the likely increase in the cost for goods and services the council pays for.
He added: “There are probably then things which are a bit more of a slow burn, so things like our collection rates, potentially on council tax, on businesses rates – if we start to see that impact feeding through into the cost of living and businesses being potentially impacted as well.
“We’re putting all that information together and developing ways to track it – in hopefully a relatively accurate way.”
Deputy leader, Paul Redgate also suggested that SHDC could store fuel for its vehicles to try to keep the costs down for the council.
He added: “If fuel starts rocketing, we want to get in there and store it and make sure that the impact to the services is reduced.”
