Case studies

Essex Resilience Forum identified issues of concern to communities and developed effective communications between communities and the public services leading the pandemic response.

Following the easing of the national lockdown, Blackburn with Darwen became an area of intervention before other parts of north England. With the situation changing weekly, communications is challenging.

In January 2017 and from September 2019, Islington Council have partnered with social enterprise Behaviour Change to pilot innovative new signage, funded by Mars Wrigley, to help tackle the issue of littered gum in known hotspots such as shopping centres, train stations and transport hubs. The signs are simple and scalable and have been proven to be twice as effective as clean-up alone.

East Sussex County Council worked over three months, across the council and partners, prototyping a new multidisciplinary outreach operations team. They provided intensive support to residents in temporary accommodation to enable them to live more independently.

Hertfordshire’s whole systems approach to child obesity includes a successful weight management service, an active school travel plan that discourages car drop-offs, and 10 “healthy hubs”.

Faced with high rates of infection in the summer, Calderdale developed a local contact tracing service in partnership with and as part of NHS Test and Trace, which went live in the middle of August.

Hertfordshire is home to nearly 1.2 million people. It has had relatively low rates of infection, but like many areas saw cases start to climb quite significantly in the autumn.

The LGA and Age UK are working collaboratively to determine how the LG Inform software applications and data services (offered by the LGA to local authorities) could be used to benefit a not for profit (NFP) organisation.

Leicester never really left lockdown. In late June it had the highest rate of positive cases in the country so just before the re-opening of restaurants, bars and hairdressers on 4 July it was announced the city was to go in reverse.

Newham launched its contact tracing service at the beginning of September. Environmental health officers have staffed the service, which has been run from Monday to Friday.