East Devon District Council chief executive Mark William refected on a year since the Covid-19 pandemic started.

East Devon District Council like others have been shocked by the rapid spread of this new infection and the speed of impact it has had on our lives and the disruption caused to our communities.

We had longstanding emergency and business continuity plans in place for all council services, these are typically focused on severe weather, fire, flood, not a worldwide pandemic lasting over a year. Nevertheless these plans were quickly adapted to maintain services wherever possible and ensure that we could provide these in a Covid-safe way for staff and residents.

From the start of the pandemic we have been working with partners to ensure a multi-agency response. The Local Resilience Forum established a series of reporting processes, information sharing, mutual support and specialist task groups initially as a response to the pandemic and more recently focused on recovering from the impact of the virus.

We had to be agile and quickly established our workforce as homeworkers where possible and ensure our highly visible frontline workers were able to work safely.

This went very smoothly considering the disruption this could have caused to service delivery. Mobile IT was already in place for many and additional IT needs were met quickly.

A Community Support Hub was established by seconding staff into a team to support residents shielding and facing hardship. The hub assisted people requiring food deliveries, medicines and social support. They linked with the numerous community and voluntary groups in the district and established a directory of support groups published on our website.

Community and voluntary groups in East Devon responded magnificently meeting the needs of a large number of residents who identified a variety of complex and routine support needs. This varied from our brilliant foodbanks through to practical and emotional support tasks.

Colleagues quickly mobilised arrangements passed down to us to administer government funded hardship and grant payments to business and individuals. A whole range of new schemes were introduced some requiring local schemes to be devised and a new system of distributing funds where they are most needed.

Refuse and Recycling collections were maintained throughout the pandemic and the three lockdowns.

Working closely with our partner Suez we created crew bubbles and measures to protect the hard working collection staff from the virus. With people working from home and/or locked down we witnessed a huge increase in recycling and household waste.

This presented additional challenges for our partner with long days for crews and additional return trips to the depot to tip off as vehicles filled up quicker than normal. Despite this additional pressure a very small number of missed collections occurred.

The pandemic has necessarily placed a focus on our public health role with our teams working with County Council Public Health colleagues to limit the spread of the infection. Environmental Health Officers have been involved in advising on and enforcing Covid-19 regulations and advice, helping business comply with new requirements and continue trading, when allowed to do so.

Our StreetScene staff have been visible and working near normal throughout the pandemic.

We had to increase the frequency and type of toilet cleaning, increase litter bin and street cleansing in response to increased visitor numbers and continue essential maintenance to the councils assets including beaches, parks and gardens, walls, bridges – the list goes on and on.

Meetings and much of the council business is now conducted virtually and the new normal has been incorporated into our routines to ensure that we could achieve a business as usual status as closely as possible.

It has been tough keeping up with the constant stream of government guidance and advice, interpreting this for the local situation and ensuring that it is implemented. This has been unprecedented with policy created, decisions made and implemented at speeds unknown in local government.

We are proud of the response and recovery work we have undertaken whilst maintaining essential services for residents and the vulnerable groups in our communities. We adapted quickly, worked hard, and many staff are in need of some respite, because whilst not as high profile as our NHS colleagues, many are essential workers, keeping essential local services running.

This is not over yet however - the council is still facing challenges and the safe reopening of tourism, hospitality and other businesses this Spring will be highly dependent upon us making sure that everyone continues to stay safe through a wide range of education, advice and enforcement interventions.

We hope are residents stay safe and strong during this difficult time.