City’s mayor wants local Covid lockdown powers
MARVIN Rees wants any decision over a local lockdown to be made in Bristol after Boris Johnson announced new three-tier coronavirus alert levels.
The city’s mayor says the Government needs to give the area power to have the say over whether additional restrictions should be introduced, rather than ordered from Whitehall.
He has written to ministers urging them to hand greater autonomy to local leaders and scrap the 10pm curfew, which he says is helping to spread Covid-19, causing tension on the streets at pub closing time and harming the nighttime economy.
The Prime Minister announced the new system for England on Monday which sees each local authority area given a rating of medium, high or very high depending on the severity of the outbreak.
Bristol has been placed in the lowest “medium” band, meaning it is subject to the same restrictions as before, despite another 66 cases in the city and its surrounding areas on Monday, with positive tests more than doubling in the past week.
But Mr Johnson has warned each area will be under constant review, so it could be moved into one of the upper tiers if cases continue to rise.
The city’s infection rates jumped from 44.2 to 95.4 per 100,000 people in the week ending Thursday, October 8, as 442 more people were confirmed as having coronavirus.
Speaking on Emma Britton’s BBC Radio Bristol breakfast show yesterday Mr Rees said there had been an “absence of conversation with local leaders” from Whitehall.
The mayor said: “When action first started on Covid, announcements were being made and we were watching the news to find out what the latest government position was along with everyone else and then trying to work out overnight the local authority’s position.
“It is no way to run a crisis like this. “So while I have some sympathy for government in that this is a very wicked situation, I can’t help but also think we could have been on a much stronger route if we’d led the country at the front end much more joined up with local government.”
He said the direction from ministers felt vague, adding: “We would like that control.
“I wrote to government last week pointing out some of our concerns about the 10pm hard curfew saying it’s not working, it’s increasing risk. In that letter I asked them to give us a lot more local autonomy, which is not just about Bristol City Council but about us working in Bristol with our universities, the police, all talking about how we manage our city, so it’s the collection of organisations.
“Our number of 90 (per 100,000 people) just three weeks ago would have been horrific, it would have been a horror story. It’s not now because other areas are around 600, so government is lending its attention to the areas causing most concern.
“But we are very concerned about 90 and would like the local powers to be able to take action that we would need to take, but that action also has to come with resources because many of the measures have a direct impact on businesses and jobs.”