“If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together”

This captures some interesting dilemmas for us as we look to our future. Our initial COVID response has been very fast and very effective. We have taken command of our own destiny, taken advantage of our own talents and abilities whilst ‘selfishly’ focusing on our place and our people. We have been focussed and relentless for 12 weeks and hammered along with our Plan on a Page. We have shut down / shut out many long meetings that have, in part, characterised our organisation and replaced them with evidence, analysis and a need for action.

Our purpose has been to do whatever it takes to protect life. There have been no reported deaths in our county for 8 days and only 1 new reported case in the last 4 days. Progress is being made.
This week we have opened our council run post-office in Usk, we have committed to take over the food parcel scheme for shielded people from Wales Government, we are likely to enable people to join our green waste scheme and we will be building a click / collect approach to the issue of library books.

All of our schools are putting in place arrangements that will enable children to return to their schools in a couple of weeks time and we are building plans to safely re-open all of our town centres as soon as Wales Government give the green light. We are doing our ‘travel alone’ stuff ever so well.

We now move into our next stage. All of the above needs to continue as we build a better picture of the next three months. Social distancing will remain with us, distance restrictions on travel are unlikely to be relaxed, there will not be a vaccine and we have to avoid that R number edging back towards 1. But we have to live and we have to get ready for a new environment.

Many residents of Monmouthshire will lose their job and with that their income and stability. Many more will be fearful and anxious of returning to public spaces. It’s likely that many will have lost fitness, missed scheduled medical procedures, be claiming benefits for the first time in their lives and will be worrying about how they meet their mortgage / rent whilst feeding their families. At the same time there will be others that have actually saved money, reduced their outgoings and taken advantage of the opportunities afforded by quieter times. Thousands have been volunteering and been neighbourly and new friendships will have formed. The social web and inter-connectedness of our people has become even more complex and it’s this space that we are now drawn towards. New challenges to us, new asks of us and many will require us to ‘travel with others’ to make the impact we need to make.

We have a rich history of being a great partner and these skills will need to return now because we have to make sense of a challenging social picture and satisfy ourselves that we have the right support arrangements available for those that need them. I am seeing third parties starting to re-establish overly complicated governance mechanisms – we are going to need to get our voice heard but we haven’t got time to live in these places.
So as a Strategic Leadership Team and at Cabinet level we are starting to think about all this stuff and will be codifying a new plan over the next couple of weeks. It will have to be flexible but I think it will be more focussed on supporting people who have gone through the toughest of times rather than protecting life. It will be about helping people to feel safe in their local communities and it will fan the flames of social action and volunteering. To deliver we are going to have to hold onto our flexibility and trust in each other. 

To conclude I have a picture of one of our new volunteers. Meet Leo. Leo has been helping Ian Blomeley who is one of our colleagues working in Countryside / Green Infrastructure to check out the condition of of footpath network. Those little legs have covered some miles but I think he’s enjoyed it. Thanks Ian and the team – our footpath network is a phenomenal asset but like everything else it needs care and attention. Let’s hope we all get to use it more in the months ahead. It would be a shame if Leo’s efforts aren’t put to good use.