#CouncilsCan: a local response to a global pandemic

COVID-19 has created challenges we could not have planned for. Nations have been brought to a standstill. Governments have had to make decisions that just months ago could never have been imagined.

Councils too have responded in an unprecedented manner. But we went into this pandemic with our own significant challenges – the prospect of an £8 billion funding gap by 2025 and pressures growing on increasingly fragile services that supported the most vulnerable, such as children’s services, adult social care, and homelessness support. Despite multi-year settlements, councils have never had certainty of funding.

Despite these unresolved issues, at a time of national crisis councils put their local leadership role first. They moved at pace, used innovative approaches and worked flexibly to support their communities and keep services running. Their communities trusted them, and they delivered. Throughout, councils learnt from and supported each other through sector-led improvement. Our key lessons are worth reflecting on:

Councils can: Quickly create new services to support national policy

Overnight, councils across the country set up completely new services to support the most vulnerable whilst they shielded at home. Within weeks, 132 council-led hubs were established across the country. Drawing on local expertise, councils led partnerships across the public, private, voluntary and community sector (VCS) handling requests for food parcels, financial support and wellbeing issues.

As the crisis began, councils quickly identified those in most need. Every council set up a range of communications channels, locally tailored in a way not possible at a national level. Befriending schemes and mental health support were offered to tackle loneliness and isolation, whilst many councils provided additional financial support to those they assessed as being in greatest need. All of this was done whilst ongoing data quality issues remained, and the role of supermarkets had to be negotiated.

Leeds City Council:Supplying food and provisions to vulnerable residents: In under a week, Leeds City Council established a large-scale partnership effort involving food banks and the voluntary sector to pack and deliver over 10,000 food parcels. Using a warehouse facility as a central hub for their emergency food provision system the council provided a coordination point for fleet vehicles and food deliveries, in a space where social distancing could be safely maintained.
East Suffolk Council: Community fund: East Suffolk Council organised a community fund amounting £150,000 in lieu of the crisis. The fund offered additional resources to more than 50 VCS organisations including food banks, community response groups, telephone befriending services and fuel/volunteer expenses for Good Neighbour Schemes.

Councils can: Deliver a cross-sector response

Councils have repeatedly demonstrated that they are the core central body that can quickly convene a range of partners to address significant national issues. From the start of this emergency, councils have provided leadership on the key issues. For example, councils in the West London Alliance teamed up with North West London Health to work collectively on mitigating the risk of infection in care homes. Craven District Council worked closely with funeral directors across Craven, Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire to ensure they could provide funeral services for a small number of close family members throughout the pandemic. Cornwall Council worked with partners to repurpose homes that had been built but not yet sold to act as emergency accommodation for the homeless. Across the country, councils used their influence to convene the local partnerships that mattered.

Blackburn with Darwen Council: Changing bereavement services: Bereavement has been one of the most difficult issues for communities and families to deal with during the crisis. Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council developed a strong partnership with local religious organisations and councillors, which helped to address concerns around Muslim burials. During the early days of the crisis, the council engaged with mosques, scholars, imams, residents and the wider community. This work was supported by the local resilience forum and the National Burial Council at the community and national level.

Councils can: Lead local economic recovery

Councils have been central to the employment and economic support that has been provided to residents and businesses. They employ significant numbers of local people in their areas and, along with support for SMEs, provide the economic backbone of local places. They were pivotal in distributing the £12.3 billion Government made available to support business through Small Business Grants, and wider support for retail, hospitality and leisure. Councils acted with urgency to provide the relief at short notice. They identified local businesses, assessed eligibility and distributed funds to over 800,000 organisations. In the first eight weeks of social distancing measures, councils had distributed £9.9 billion of funding.

Wirral Council: Supporting business: Wirral Council distributed grants totaling £24 million to 2,200 local businesses in just ten days. The council rapidly redeployed staff and increased weekend working to help get funds into business accounts and provided £100,000 in additional resource to help local businesses. Working closely with the Wirral Chamber of Commerce, business support helplines were established with online access and information, and social media campaigns.
Elmbridge Borough Council: Elmbridge Civic Improvement Fund: Elmbridge Council expanded its existing business funding scheme to help independent high street businesses to reopen safely. Funding was made available for businesses to purchase equipment – including hand sanitiser and cleaning stations, barriers, and signage – valued up to £250. A simple application process was created to ensure that businesses could implement the necessary adaptations quickly. As of June 2020, over 60 business have accessed this funding, which has helped to protect both customers and staff.

Councils are now turning to longer term recovery issues, reviewing the opportunities offered by the green economy and digital innovation, and supporting local businesses. In Barnsley, the council’s business support service, Enterprising Barnsley, has continued to build on its web-based services for local businesses with a suite of offers to support recovery and beyond. This includes online video content and webinars. Slough Borough Council has developed a recovery and renewal plan covering the next five-year period while Malvern Hills District Council is developing a town prospectus with businesses, town councils and others to deliver a new sustainable, green and innovative future. Councils can lead the social, economic and environmental recovery at a local level because they understand the needs and nuances of local economies. The speed at which councils got their response up and running shows that local can be more nimble than national and councils can deliver at pace.

Councils can: Care for people

Social care, alongside the NHS, has formed a vital part of the frontline response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and councils have stepped up as direct providers and commissioners of social care services. Councils have been at the forefront of work to support infection control both in care homes and in domiciliary settings, and have worked to facilitate training and guidance, retain staff and enhance the advice they were able to offer.

Councils support far more people outside care home settings, making the range of needs they must address much more complex. Of the funding given to local government to support the COVID-19 effort, 40 per cent of it has been allocated directly to adult social care.

Hertfordshire County Council: A coordinated approach to supporting care markets: Hertfordshire County Council set up a ‘provider hub’, run jointly with the Hertfordshire Care Providers Association, including a helpline, available seven days a week. Since its launch, the hub has supported more than 800 social care providers by giving professional advice and answers to questions around government guidance, financial support, personal protective equipment (PPE), food supplies, staffing issues and access to financial support packets. The hub also collected information from social care providers on the difficulties they were having (including those related to confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths). This information was shared with the council’s Adult Social Care Board to support a swift public response to challenges, alongside public health partners.

And councils took the lead in tackling the issue of PPE shortages for social care staff, recognising its importance in protecting not just staff but the most vulnerable in our society. In Surrey, councillors coordinated activity with schools and colleges to make visors and in Richmondshire, its councillors set up a ‘scrub hub’ to produce supplies.

Warwickshire County Council: Enabling a county wide approach to PPE: Warwickshire County Council created a PPE taskforce to help ensure that frontline staff had access to PPE. The council worked with local companies, charities, community groups and residents to procure supplies additional to the national stocks. The taskforce has successfully provided PPE to more than 400 care providers to date and has a 24-hour standard service (or within three hours for urgent requests).
Kingston Council: Talking about mental health: With Mental Health Awareness Week aligning with the social distancing measures, Kingston Council invited residents to join a virtual Q&A, asking them to submit questions around mental health and COVID-19 to be answered by a panel of mental health experts. This session provided residents with an opportunity to gain valuable information and advice, and to tackle anxieties by engaging in a broader conversation about mental health.

Councils can: Adapt to a new world

Across the country, councils reshaped and redesigned core services in response to COVID-19. Nationally 91 per cent of household waste collections continued as usual although services were hit by staff illnesses, social distancing challenges and increased amounts of waste to collect.

Councils worked with education leaders to ensure schools remained open to the children of key workers and vulnerable children. They tailored their children’s social care services so that vulnerable children were protected and supported, introducing new initiatives such as ‘home from home’ offers to support children when their relatives were unwell and getting social workers to engage with children online.

Parks were among the first places that people turned to support their mental and physical wellbeing during the restrictions. Councils worked hard to ensure they remained open. Library service membership increased by an estimated 120,000 people during the first few weeks of lockdown; while registrations for digital library access increased by 600 per cent. There has been a boom in the development of online and streamed library services and museum hubs, and some councils such as Brighton and Hove and Southampton, have developed virtual tourism experiences so that ‘visitors’ can enjoy what places have to offer without having to leave their own homes.

Sutton Council: Better data-sharing with the voluntary sector to make referrals: Data-sharing with the NHS has enabled Sutton Council, working with the voluntary and community sector, to provide households with the support they need during the crisis. The Council already had excellent and well-established working relationships with these sectors to build on. On receiving the shielding lists from the Government, a Council triage team contacted each individual to understand their needs. Data-sharing agreements were quickly put in place with the voluntary sector so that referrals could be made to the most appropriate organisation for the support required. In total, over 600 Sutton residents were contacted and received the support they needed in this way.

Councils can: Provide democratic accountability

Councils have overcome the practical issues relating to democratic decision making. With social distancing requirements, councils rapidly introduced online meetings to ensure democratic accountability remained central to decision-making and switched to the use of online platforms. The transition from ‘real’ to virtual meetings has been almost seamless, allowing councils to concentrate on supporting their communities. They have maintained transparency and allowed local democracy to flourish, while developing technological solutions at scale and in ways not seen before. During this period more than 200 councils used the LGA’s Remote Councils meetings hub for practical information and guidance on how to run virtual meetings.

Councils can: Continue to lead local responses

The response of local government to the challenges and consequences of COVID-19 has cut across all council services and responsibilities. The breadth, pace and interconnectivity of the response could only have been achieved by local government. As the country emerges from the restrictions, it is essential that local responses continue to inform recovery and renewal. This will be best supported by a sector-led approach and will require councils to continue to lead partnerships at a local level, renewing the relationship between citizens and public services and building on the community capacity that has been developed.