It was great to see so many come together to Light Up the District streamed live online, celebrating the beginning of a most unusual festive season. This fun event demonstrated our community’s ingenuity, creativity and resilience, which we intend to build upon into the new year.
Tier 3 is not the place we expected to be just now, given that infection rates have fallen again this past week from 223.3 to 150 Covid cases per 100,000 residents. Over 60’s infection levels are also dropping and our local hospitals are maintaining good Covid bed capacity. Yet the powers that be when making this critically important assessment have lumped us, along with near neighbours in Stratford, into a wider cohort including the rest of Warwickshire, Coventry and even Solihull.
This virus doesn’t respect council boundaries, directly responding to how we live and where we live. We’ve learnt that Covid is best constrained through actions taken by a connected local community with a clearly defined place, such as we have in South Warwickshire. Rest assured that through our various health partnerships with Stratford and with ongoing government lobbying, we’ll do all that we can to be reassessed into Tier 2 at the earliest opportunity, most probably by 16 December.
Of course, tier restrictions will be relaxed between 23 and 27 December, when families will be able to form a Christmas bubble with no more than three households. In the meantime, your Council is working to provide timely and targeted support:
- 571 National or Local Restrictions Support Grant (LRSG) for business rates customers have been processed so far and over £935k paid out.
- We’ve also received a whopping 620 Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) applications, paying out to date £115k to our local non-rated businesses.
- In addition, we’re preparing a new scheme to target grant support for our hospitality businesses that will be adversely affected by the Tier 3 restrictions.
Please keep a watchful eye on your family, friends and neighbours in case they are vulnerable and might need support. The Covid-19 Community directory provides information on available local support and services and the clinically extremely vulnerable can access support on 0800 4081447. And our Community Emergency Recovery Fund is still available for charitable organisations which have adapted or increased their support services.
Plans for mass testing and the imminent arrival of the vaccine give us all hope for a bright new year. Remember too that the new Mega Lab will open in July at Tachbrook Park processing up to 300,000 tests a day. Recruitment begins in a couple of weeks – details of the extensive range of some 2,000 jobs are available, here. We’re also in discussion to gather information on the wider procurement opportunities for local companies.
Thanks to some great partnership working with the Chamber of Trade and BID Leamington we’re delighted to be able to offer FREE parking in all Warwick District Council off-street car parks throughout December. Hopefully this initiative will help encourage us all to safely travel into our town centres to visit our amazing local retailers and enjoying the brilliant Christmas shopping on offer.
