Howard Woollaston – Update on COVID-19

A number of residents have been asking about West Berkshire Council’s response to the virus and flooding issues. Where do I start ?! Perhaps the best solution is to share the Members Briefing Note from the meeting I attended yesterday . In future I will be attending these virtually using the new video conferencing system that the Council has set up .

I hope from this note that you can see the immense amount of work and thought that is going into addressing this crisis . I will be updating this on a weekly basis but stress that as mentioned by Nick Carter , the Chief Executive of the Council , WBC will be relying on individual parishes to also rally round and help their communities.

Notes of COVID-19 Briefing in Council Chamber 2.00 pm Thursday 19^th March 2020 to All Members by Chief Executive (Nick Carter), Leader of the Council (Lynne Doherty) and Head of Public Health and Wellbeing (Matt Pearce).

Matt’s Update

The Government have moved into the Delay Phase of their response to COVID-19. This includes implementing a range social distancing measures such as avoiding mass gatherings, visiting pubs, theatres and closing local schools.

Acknowledgment that a significant proportion of the population will likely become infected. Primary strategy is to suppress or stunt the epidemic curve so that the NHS and other public services are not overwhelmed.

The social distancing guidance was published earlier this week that asks people who have symptoms to self-isolate for 7-days and other members of the family for 14-days if required. Guidance also includes vulnerable groups whom need to take special protective measures. There appears to be some confusion around the differences between self-isolation and social distancing

As of yesterday there were 2182 cases in England and 3 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in WB residents, however this figure is likely to significantly underestimate the true number of cases as we are doing very little testing in the community.

Important to remember the majority of cases will have mild symptoms, but those who are elderly or have underlying health conditions are most at risk.

The government continues to update and publish a range of guidance which include the following:

Care Homes and residential care
Education
Rough Sleepers

We are continuing to work with partners and service areas across the Council to support the implementation of new guidance as and when it is published. We expect a list of key workers to be published this afternoon following the announcement of schools being closed from Monday.

Public Health England had starting to scale back contact tracing and as we now recognise that community transmission is likely to be rapidly increasing. In relation to testing, the Government is steadily increasing the number of tests across the country from 10,000 tests per day to an ambition of 25,000 per day. Current testing focussed on appropriate clinical management of ICU patients with pneumonia, hospital admissions with pneumonia and outbreaks in special settings like prisons and care homes.

The Government recognise the need to have a test for Health Care Workers and Social Care Staff to prevent people being off unnecessarily with presumed disease. They are working on developing an antibody test to identify workers who may have already had the disease and therefore could return to work if applying social distancing or self-isolating.

Nick’s Update

This is an incredibly rapidly changing position. A major incident has now been declared across West Berkshire/Thames Valley. We will now move the structure of how we are managing this to a Gold command which will be a daily meeting, probably here with the senior management and Lynne will join that. We will then have a Silver meeting at 10.00 am daily which is more of an operational meeting with Heads of Service and key managers which will pick up on business continuity. There are likely to be three x 2 hour meetings a week on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In terms of the Local Resilience Forum there are meetings underway coordinating the COVID work and we are well represented on that with regular updates. There is a lot of teleconferencing going on.

We are trying to keep the Council Offices open but we have made it clear for staff and Members in that vulnerable category, it is mandatory they should be at home. We are trying to maintain some level of staffing in the offices but Lynne and I are quite keen to get the message across that we are open for business and if we can maintain staffing numbers will try to keep the offices open. One or two authorities around us have closed down.

In terms of the community – a number of you have e mailed me for an update and that is probably the most important part of this. We had a letter from the Secretary of State last night saying that they wanted local government to act as the provider of support to those residents who are “cocooned” at home or who are self-isolating and may be for many months. We have (and with the institution of the Volunteer Bureau and Greenham Trust) set up the Community Support Hub. We are still working through how this is going to work but we need to look at how we harness the community groups, parish councils and help from volunteers that are very keen to be involved in this. We absolutely see them having a role. We need to make sure once we have identified vulnerable people we look at logistically how we get food, medicine and emotional support to them.

We are trying to work out how that model/hub will work. I hope to be able to share with you tomorrow some of the first thinking around that but we are going to have a conversation with a number of the key players who have been involved in setting this Hub up with us about what the role of parish councils, community groups and Facebook should be and how the Hub here will work in terms of making sure we are providing that support. All work is in progress but I sincerely hope by the end of the week I will be able to give you something to provide that clarity.

This Hub was established last week as a large number of interested parties were contacting us but we are working on the basis of having some form of meeting on a Monday evening at 5.00 pm to try and bring all of those interested parties together so that there is a sense of coordination and clarity about what we need to do. I can’t outline to you how that is going to work at the moment as we are making this up as we go along but we have established a dedicated phone line operating alongside the contact centre and it is the Building Communities Together Team who are running this. They are busy getting a whole variety of different calls, some from individuals who are concerned and need help, through to community groups who are wanting to provide assistance. We have that phone line up and running and are doing our best to publicise that. The Newbury Weekly News have been very supportive of that and are part of the hub too and should be at the meeting at 5.00 pm on Monday to help.

We’ve had the suggestion of getting a flyer through everyone’s doors and we are keen to do that but we need to be clear about how that is going to work. It would need to be agreed with all Partners involved. The principle of this at the moment is that we want to use the Parish Councils and the community groups, street groups and individuals to try and identify who those vulnerable individuals are. We think that some communities will do that very well but we do have a real concern about some other areas. I feel less concerned about getting stuff to people rather than identifying them. There is also a conversation about how councils can get hold of food and medicine. I think there are lots of people willing to drive around and do this but we need to be sure we pick up everyone who needs that support. Give me a couple of days with partners to get this together and I hope to send you a diagram to clarify it.

The issues about Schools has been covered by Matt but we were expecting some guidance at 1.00 pm from the Government to clarify who they determine to be key workers. The children of those key workers will remain at school, along with vulnerable children with an EHCP and teachers will be expected to be in school to look after those pupils. We are expecting social workers to be in that but there is a discussion about what the government will decide is a key worker.

We have made a decision around Care Homes which will probably be enacted tomorrow that we will CLOSE the care homes to visitors. There is a lot of evidence in Italy that there are many deaths linked to care homes. We may have to make exceptions for ‘end of life care’ patients but this would seem the best way to protect vulnerable residents.

You will appreciate that the virus crisis has in many ways taken eyes off the ball of the flooding issue particularly as we seem to be due a dry week or so but I am not remotely decrying it’s importance. I chaired a meeting of the Lambourn Valley Flood Forum last Monday evening attended by two members of the Environment Agency , two from Thames Water and two from West Berks Council along with flood wardens from each of the villages .

This is not a quick fix and I will share the outcomes after the minutes are issued . The key issue as I am sure most are aware is the water table . We had 250% of normal rainfall in February and that is putting pressure on sewer pipes and creating the problem . The amateurs amongst us asked a number of questions such as :-

Can we create a reservoir to reduce the water table? – No won’t work
Why can’t all of the manhole covers be sealed ? – They can but the water has to go somewhere and that may mean it backing up into people’s house/flats
Is the sewerage from Membury Service Station having an impact? No it enters the system significantly downstream.

We left it with the view that let’s manage the current situation as best we can over the next couple of months and then re-address it . None of the experts could see a solution and to be fair to Thames Water they have gone the extra mile ,at their cost , to try and minimise the problem by pumping into the tankers that we have all seen . This is also not just a Lambourn Valley issue but a problem in a number of areas around the country .

The big question is whether 2019/20 is an exceptional winter or whether climate change will make this a recurring problem.

On the question of the footpath by the drain problem by the Fire Station in Lambourn , I will ask for it to be closed temporarily – it seems like the obvious solution . The only concern being possibly the scaffolding going up on the outside of the old Lamb PH and the junction of Newbury Street/ Newbury Road and Mill Lane .

The bus service to Swindon has been curtailed as a number of the drivers fell into the at risk sector . I am informed that the Newbury service is regarded as a priority and will be kept going unless we hit disaster scenario.

Veolia operate the refuse collection under a contract from West Berkshire Council and the current feedback is that it is not at risk unless the virus takes a massive toll on the workforce.

I will try to keep everyone informed. Keep well all.

Kind Regards

Howard Woollaston

West Berkshire Conservative District Councillor for Lambourn
Executive Portfolio Holder for Internal Governance

Howard.woollaston1@westberks.gov.uk