Northumberland delight at local lockdown u-turn on childcare arrangements
Following the introduction of a local lockdown across the country and large part of the region, ministers initially confirmed last Friday that“friends or family who do not live with you must not visit your home to help with childcare unless they are part of your support bubble”.
This angered council leaders in the region as they had pleaded for informal childcare arrangements to be exempt from the tougher restrictions they had requested.
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Hide AdHealth secretary Matt Hancock, however, has now reversed this part of the local lockdown on September 21.
A statement from seven north east council leaders, including Northumberland County Council's acting leader, Councillor Glen Sanderson, said afterwards: “As soon as new Covid control measures were introduced across the North East we began lobbying Government to include an exemption on household mixing regulations to allow families to continue their informal childcare arrangements.
“This was an exemption we asked for in our original request to Government and we’re delighted the Secretary of State has reversed his decision.
“We knew these restrictions would ask a lot of our communities, but we did not want them to hinder people unnecessarily.”
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Hide AdThe seven councils – which also include South Tyneside, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, County Durham and Sunderland – have also asked the Government to provide more support to local businesses impacted by the new restrictions.
In a joint statement they said: The sight of our usually busy city centres and high streets falling into near silence when 10pm passed on Friday night once again emphasised the need for government to help us to support the businesses inevitably impacted by these necessary restrictions.
"Residents across the North East, who have already experienced so much hardship during the pandemic, responded brilliantly once again and observed new legislation to control COVID-19.
“For weeks we have seen infection rates rise and having taken the difficult step to request tighter controls, it was pleasing to see residents answer our call by doing what had been asked.”