“The past two weeks have seen unprecedented changes to the way we live our lives and the way we work. The Council has had to move swiftly to adapt the way we operate in order to maintain its services to customers and business, with reduced staffing and increased national pressures. 

“Despite the challenges we are all faced with we have worked through our continuity plans as well as brought in new ways of working, and are maintaining our services in addition to providing some new ones.

“In the midst of these uncertain times it’s heartening to know we have a team of staff who are going above and beyond their regular duties to ensure our communities are fully supported.

“This week we have seen some of our leisure staff join a county-wide effort to deliver food parcels to the most vulnerable, our waste crews have received numerous thank you messages from residents for continuing to work, despite the increased risk of contamination, our revenues team has contacted around 1,500 businesses offering them guidance and support for new grant applications and our housing team is calling tenants offering much needed advice and reassurance. We also have a team of staff about to launch further community support initiatives, all while our usual council business continues behind the scenes.

“Following the new Government measures many of our staff are now working from home but where the need remains we still have colleagues working from operational sites, where possible maintaining the social distancing measures put in place for everyone’s safety.

“Because of the ever-changing situation we are encouraging our communities to regularly check our dedicated Coronavirus webpage for specific service updates, as we continue to change how we operate, while remaining very much open for business.”

Andrew Jarrett                            Bob Deed

Deputy Chief Executive                Leader of the Council

For more information:

• For regular updates you can sign up to our free email subscription service
• To read the latest service updates visit our dedicated Coronavirus: Support for communities and businesses page
• Further information about Coronavirus and the Government’s response is available at gov.uk/coronavirus