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I’m sure most of us welcomed 2021 at subdued New Year celebrations with both optimism and trepidation.
Last year was an awful year, but thanks to the hard work of so many, a huge amount of help was provided to older people and the vulnerable, those who lost their jobs and families struggling to make ends meet.
We now turn to the hard work of this year.
The Council is committed to supporting GPs to getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.
To that end, we will make Council resources to assist with the vaccination programme, including providing marshalling, locations to carry out vaccinations, and administration services.
This includes an additional £1.2million which we will be allocating later this month, some of which will be used to make this happen.
The vaccine is the key to getting to the other side of this pandemic, and we need to work together as one community to roll it out.
To more effectively target infection outbreaks, and ensure a faster return to normality, we will be pushing out lateral flow testing, including reopening the testing area which we set up at the Council offices in Wokingham.
Struggling
In December last year, we set aside £3.4million provided by Central Government for discretionary grants to support businesses that are struggling at this difficult time.
This is on the back of around £19million in business rate relief provided in 2020.
If you are running a business which has been affected by the pandemic, please go to the Coronavirus Announcements page on the Wokingham Borough Council website.
We are acutely conscious of how lockdown has affected families and individuals too.
We will continue to do whatever we can to support those in need.
If you need any help at all, please don’t hesitate to use our One Front Door service, run in conjunction with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.
As we start to see the beginning of the end of this nightmare, we need to start looking to how we both rebuild our communities and look to the future needs of everyone in the Borough.
We will soon be introducing a Poverty Strategy to make sure that no-one is left behind, and an Equalities Strategy to provide equal opportunities for each person, no matter where they start out in life.
Later this year, we will also be bringing forward our new draft Local Plan, and asking you for your input in how we provide the right number of new and affordable homes, in the right places.
The Council needs to work with you on how we keep shaping the future of our Borough.
We will make the best success of this if we hear from people across our towns and villages, and I would urge you all to play the fullest part in all our consultations, put questions to Council meetings, and join in with any workshops and virtual public meetings. We are one community, and it is essential that we go forward together.
Cllr John Halsall is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council
