Today I subbed for a member of our LibDem group on the South Norfolk District Council Scrutiny Committee and the agenda was how the Council had coped with the COVID emergency when it first kicked in March.
Looking back now, it is astonishing to see just how quickly council employees, officers and councillors themselves sprang into action. Faced with lock-down and the knowledge that thousands of people would be affected by restrictions brought in by the government, arrangements were made to ensure residents got the help they needed.
My experience was as a picker-upper and deliverer of prescriptions (I remember one particularly long stint taking me five hours waiting outside the pharmacy for my turn, But it was worth it, I delivered over 10 prescriptions that day to people who were shielding)
This then morphed into helping an online local volunteer group, set up by people who were themselves shielding. South Norfolk’s Help Hub, a kind of one stop destination for people seeking assistance, worked with volunteer groups to ensure people got their medicines, food parcels, access other help such as financial assistance or even deal with people who were isolated and just wanted someone to talk to. I commend the people working on Help Hub. In my eyes they were as valuable as our key workers and deserve recognition for how they stepped up too.
The community response was truly amazing. COVID-19 has shown us difficult times but it has also shown us that community is actually alive and well. So our Scrutiny Committee looked at how processes were rapidly put in place to deal with the need of many residents. Of course there were some blips on the way but on the whole, council officers and employees rose to the challenge (even faster than County Council did)
OK, you can sense a ‘but’ now…
The ‘but’ would be for the future actually. To say we responded well is a given. However the reality is the financial cost to the council and services.
I asked how much government assistance had been given and was told it was just about enough. Back in March, the Secretary of State said the government would ‘do what it takes’ to help local councils through this. But a second wave would mean we would definitely need more funds to ensure our services could continue. And that means making a nuisance of ourselves to government, lobbying for vital funding.
I also asked about the impact on businesses particularly those small start ups which could not access the business grant schemes. A Tory councillor on the Committee agreed that more needed to be done to support them, particularly that since lock-down, there are more fledgling businesses out there with people deciding to try new ventures due to unemployment, redundancy or simply wanting to change direction.
For now, we could stand back and clap ourselves on the back for having done well.
Or we can look to the future and possibly the emergence of the dreaded second wave. How will we respond then? Have we learned from errors made and will we be able to respond with the same robust action to protect our vulnerable?
The worst thing for any council is complacency. And to stop that we have to keep moving, keep looking to tweak and improve, and believe that however difficult this pandemic is proving to be, we will eventually prevail.
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