Published Friday 11 December 2020 at 14:22
Today Council leader Mohammed Khan CBE has formally written to the Government following their latest announcements.
He has asked that Blackburn with Darwen is urgently prioritised for all of the various opportunities and measures that can help us keep cases down.
He said:
We are pleased that the massive effort being made by people in the borough, alongside the Council and NHS are being acknowledged by Government.
Now we need urgent action on all the promises of help continue the good work and help us ‘stick at it’ as we continue to pull together, follow the rules and wait for the vaccine to start having an impact.
People in our borough have been living with some sort of restriction since the national lockdown in March.
We deserve every opportunity to help us recover from this terrible year.
These are the things that we believe will make the most difference:
- Being able to return to offering no symptom testing in our established local testing centres
- Rapid testing for teachers and pupils in our schools
- Financial support for businesses in the form of discretionary grants for businesses which have had the most disruption or have not been able to access previous help
- More funds to support people who need to isolate following a positive test
- Priority vaccination for all of our vulnerable residents and the wider working age population in phase 2
- Additional enforcement powers to tackle non-compliance