Praise for Northumberland's 'amazing' response in fighting coronavirus

Coun Peter Jackson, a Conservative, also defended the Government’s response, despite its own figures showing that the UK has had one of the highest death counts globally during the pandemic.

“There’s been too much party politics going on nationally,” he said. “If people had come together a little bit more, possibly offer solutions rather than just pure criticism, the country would have been a little bit more united.”

Asked for his view of how the Government has handled Covid-19, Coun Jackson said: “There’s been quite a lot of talk with hindsight as to what the Government should have done or shouldn’t have done, but actually its main aims and objectives in dealing with the crisis have quite clearly been achieved.

“All the forecasts just 12 weeks ago were that the whole country was going to be engulfed and there were going to be hundreds and thousands of deaths in our communities.

“Unfortunately we have seen many people struck down by the disease, but it could have been so much worse.”

He added: “The lockdown has been effective, these things do take a number of weeks to work.

“I think if you look at the way other countries around the world are being affected now, our control measures actually have been effective, although there have been ups and downs along the way, because we’ve been dealing with a very uncertain situation that the world, never mind this country, has never seen before.

“The Government has been doing its best based on the best advice that it’s had.

“Likewise in Northumberland, our local authority has done a sterling job in guiding our county through the crisis.

“We have been trying to keep essential services going as best we can, so full credit to all of the staff involved in that, and now we’re absolutely concentrating on opening up our county, but in a very safe and measured way.”

His praise for the efforts of the county council and staff were echoed by the Labour opposition – but they did not share his view of the Government’s response.

The group’s deputy leader, Coun Scott Dickinson, believes that ‘Northumberland rose above the national Covid-19 chaos and did what was best for the county’.

“The way the county council, the clinical commissioning group which plans and buys healthcare on behalf of people living in the county, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, GPs and care-home providers have worked together has to be acknowledged,” he said earlier this month.

“At a national level, it is hard to take any pride in how the pandemic has been handled; the lack of testing, a shortage of protective equipment, the highest death toll in Europe and one of the highest in the world – the numbers speak for themselves.

“But at a county level, the response has been amazing. As a county, and despite being starved of resources for many years, Northumberland has responded to every single one of the national Government’s requirements (and there have been many) and worked in partnership in the interests of everyone living in the county.

“Many of the issues highlighted nationally simply did not happen in our county, because organisations worked together to solve them on a local level.”

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