We are several weeks into this third lockdown and it is likely to go on for a while longer. We all knew it would be a difficult and long winter, compounded now by the snow. For some of us, however, this does uplift the spirit and many have taken the chance to go out and enjoy it – it is much better than never-ending days of rain.

Many of our businesses are struggling with not being able to trade and are reliant on government grants or loans. Babergh has helped more than 2,000 businesses locally and so far has distributed almost £31.3m of grants to them.

Whilst this is government money, it has required a huge effort on the part of Babergh's Economic Development team to contact businesses, evaluate applications and get the money paid. We have seconded staff from other departments to help with this. We are now preparing measures for helping businesses when we move from response to recovery mode.

Our budget for 2021-22 has now been approved by Cabinet and will go to Council on 23rd February for final approval. It does include the additional income forecast from the changes to the parking tariffs approved by Cabinet.

We do realise that these have angered some people in Hadleigh and Sudbury and we don't take decisions like this lightly, but if you listened to the meeting last week you will have heard all the arguments on both sides of the debate and the reasons why the cabinet made the unanimous decision it did.

The other controversial but necessary part of our income is that provided by our commercial investments. There is a lot of ill-informed hostility regarding these, with no recognition that they are actually doing what was intended: to provide a regular source of income that goes a long way to make up for the loss of government support that local authorities have had to deal with.

In 2019-20 our net income was £930k, this year it is expected to be about another £1m and in our budget for 2021-22 we are forecasting a net income of £1.8m. This should be compared with forecasts of £5.8m income from Council Tax and £3.1m from Business Rates.

Sometimes we have to make unpopular decisions, but I can assure you that they are not done because we are mad, bad or stupid – rather they are made to ensure we have sound finances and can continue to deliver the services that all of our residents, wherever they live in the district, need and expect.