Agenda item

The Leader highlighted the purpose of this Cabinet Report was to provide an update on the Council’s response to the Covid pandemic and the City’s recovery ensuring residents and businesses comply with the current restrictions and the progress being made with the Council’s Strategic Recovery Aims and Corporate Plan.

The last month saw the Omicron variant become the dominant strain across Newport and Wales.  The number of positive cases for the variant significantly increased across Wales over the last two weeks which was also having an impact on Council services.

In response, the Welsh Government took Wales into Alert Level 2 and reintroduced several restrictions to support the health and care services.  The Welsh Minister however would be making his announcement later on possibly easing of restrictions.

The report outlined these restrictions the Cabinet continued to ask residents and businesses to follow these and to take up the opportunity to take up the booster jab and vaccinations for those have not done so already.     

With the increase in the number of cases across the community, this was now having an impact on Council staff including those in school settings. 

The Council’s Gold (Civil Contingencies) team and Cabinet Members were receiving regular reports on this ongoing situation and there was number of staff absences due to staff either self-isolating and/or absent with Covid.  This had an impact on the Council’s front-line and critical services such as social services, City Services and our schools.  Contingency measures were in place across Council and schools to manage this situation.

The Leader asked service users, residents and businesses across Newport, to keep in touch with the Council’s social media, and website with any announcements to the disruption of our services.  If anyone was concerned about the delivery of their service or concerned for their neighbours and family members to get in contact with the Council. 

The Leader and the Council also understood the difficulty for Newport’s residents and businesses faced during this time of year due to the cost of living, fuel payments and not being able to trade as normal.

Newport Council and the Welsh Government had many financial and non-financial support packages in place.  The Leader wanted to take this opportunity to encourage those that needed assistance to contact the Council and also visit the Council’s website to see what support was available during this period of time.  In addition to this support, last month this Cabinet agreed to provide an additional £100k towards supporting the City’s foodbanks and charities.  This funding would help the foodbanks to manage the increase in demand for their services and to help households to try and improve their circumstances.

The Leader highlighted the strategic recovery aims as outlined within the report.

Finally, the Leader referred to Councillor Harvey’s comments earlier in that we were approaching the two year anniversary of the beginning of the pandemic and echoed the Cabinet Member’s thanks to council staff supporting Newport.

Comments of Cabinet Members:

§  Councillor Jeavons referred to front line services of Newport City Council and reiterated that staff were not immune to Covid.  The Omicron variant had spread rapidly and this had an effect on services, if therefore some streets were missed over the Christmas period, residents should leave their refuse out to be collected as soon as possible.

§  Councillor Harvey and Hughes echoed the comments of the Leader.

Decision:

Cabinet considered and noted the contents of the report and for Cabinet / Cabinet Members to receive updates from officers as part of their portfolio.