This is a mission. A national mission. Delivered locally.
I was privileged to attend a meeting of local government representatives with the Prime Minister to coordinate the response of councils to the coronavirus crisis.
Boris Johnson was clear that it is for local authorities to provide leadership in communities and to mastermind the challenge of beating this pandemic.
We are on the frontline – engaging with communities, solving people’s problems at street level, administering benefits, improving housing, working with small businesses, and marshalling the local community groups.
As the housing, revenue and benefit authorities, districts will be supporting families through a whole range of difficulties, including through the Hardship Fund. And as billing authorities, they will be helping local businesses access rate reliefs and grants to get through one of the toughest times in their history.
While this will be led locally by a named individual in your local resilience forum, it is district councils that have a key delivery role to play in the ‘last mile’.
“This crisis will be a crucial test of local government’s ability to lead the local state”
We all have a vital part to play aiding our county colleagues to protect the NHS by ramping up the social care support for vulnerable groups – helping health and care services to cope, and to minimise deaths.
There are great numbers of people affected by this virus for different reasons. Some will be served by our health partners, some by us, and some by both – we must work as one team to set up hubs coordinating the local effort.
And we have an almighty important role in safeguarding our local businesses and protecting jobs.
The Government understands this, and that we have a key job, including to make the Hardship Fund work hardest for those who most need it.
This crisis will be a crucial test of local government’s ability to lead the local state – even while our own organisations are grappling with a wide range of financial challenges as a result of this illness.
We need to think creatively, using the staff we have and redeploying them to support volunteers in our own or neighbouring areas, as well as seconding staff to bolster the social care system if that’s what it takes.
This is our time. It’s why we stood for election and why our officials signed up for the job.
It will be our leadership, resolve and ability to beat this problem – one family at a time, one street at a time, one place at a time.
