Focus on reducing social contact
CITY COUNCIL LEADER EXPLAINS DECISIONS ON BUSINESS CLOSURES
THE leader of the city council has said decisions on which business to close were taken partly on “which services we wouldn’t miss as a population”.
He also said ministers were repeatedly told the measures should apply across the county – rather than just south Notts – but that these warnings were ignored until the last minute Government U-turn.
Measures to combat high rates of infection in Nottinghamshire go further than any other part of the country, with beauty salons and tattoo parlours now closed. Additional restrictions are also in place for cafes.
Councillor David Mellen, leader of Nottingham City Council, said the closures were “not a comment on the safety of the businesses”, but that all efforts had to be made to reduce social contact.
Speaking yesterday, Councillor Mellen said: “When we first went into Tier Two and up until a few days ago, we had the highest level in the country.
“Obviously the Nottingham figure has gone down since then, but the county levels are all on the rise, and so with the package of measures, there was a lot of discussion to make sure it was going to have a difference in terms of restricting the places that people could meet.
“It’s not any kind of comment on the safety or otherwise of those services that have had to close. Obviously it was taking into account what are essential services, what maybe we wouldn’t miss as a population if they were not here for a month, and also in the knowledge that businesses that were affected would be compensated.
“Maybe not enough, but there would be a significant amount of money to help compensate businesses.
“We will develop a scheme with the other councils for the discretionary spend (to affected businesses), and there is still the money the Chancellor has announced which will still be available.
“We need to balance that (discretionary spending) with those who won’t be entitled to that money from the Chancellor because they’re not closing, but whose custom might be significantly impaired by these regulations.
“In the meetings on Thursday, Friday and Monday, several council leaders raised the point that ‘shouldn’t you be considering the rest of the county?’.
“If you look at the position of Hucknall, for example, squashed in between the city, Gedling and Broxtowe, surely it was inevitable the levels in the city were going to spread to other areas, and if to Ashfield then to Mansfield and so on. But that was knocked back by the Government each time. They said ‘no, we’re only considering just these four council areas (Nottingham, Gedling, Broxtowe, Rushcliffe).
“Then after we’d agreed it on Monday, ready to explain it to the public on Tuesday, Matt Hancock gets involved after we’d done all the negotiations with the minister in the housing department to say no the whole rest of Nottinghamshire, who hadn’t been involved in the discussions, who hadn’t contributed to the package we’d come to, were involved.
“So it was not at all well organised. Unnecessary delay, unnecessar y duplication, and then we couldn’t talk to the public in Nottingham until 5.30pm Wednesday.
“So no, I’m not impressed by the way it’s been organised. It’s meant unnecessary work for our officers, and it’s not led to clarity for people.”
Asked about how confident he was that the measures would begin to reduce infection rates, he said: “Nobody can be absolutely confident.
“We’ve just got to do what we can within the understanding we have of this virus.
“We’re taking the advice of public health experts, so I think there’s some evidence the Tier Two restrictions have had some effect in our city, but the drop in numbers has largely been in the student numbers, of young people who are likely to recover much more quickly than those in the over-65 age group.
“The overwhelming thing for us, in terms of going for these restrictions, was the number of people in hospital, more than 300 people in NUH in beds with positive Covid diagnosis.”
Asked about criteria for changing Tier Three at the end of the 28-day period, he said: “I think it was the minister or civil servant who said they will look at a ‘basket of data’.
“I would assume those would be our overall infection rate, our rate in the vulnerable area of people over 65 and, probably most crucially, the number of people in our hospitals.” Asked whether he expected the restrictions to become tighter should the situation worsen, he said: “Who knows?
“Certainly it could be that we have a second 28 days of restrictions if things haven’t moved, but that would have to be a fresh decision.
“We can’t change this set of restrictions but people’s opinions and the situations we know about will also be taken into account if any new restrictions, or this current set of restrictions, have to be renewed in 28 days.”
Asked about the decision to prevent cafes from operating as they were, he said: “Cafes can stay open to do takeaway service, or if people are coming in for a meal – there’s no problem with that as long as it’s table service.we’re trying to get together a package of measures that both took into account the very high levels of infections in the city and the fact that our economy is really important.”
It’s not any kind of comment on the safety or otherwise of those services that have had to close David Mellen