The Leader of Nottingham City Council has written to the Prime Minister urging him to recognise the city’s efforts in driving down Covid-19 cases ahead of new Government tiers being decided this week.
Councillor David Mellen says that a huge amount of effort has been made by the Council and its partners, but most importantly by the people of Nottingham to reduce infection rates in the city.
A month ago, Nottingham had the highest proportion of cases anywhere in the country, with close to 1,000 Covid-19 infections for every 100,000 people.
Thanks to collective efforts of sticking to tighter restrictions and limiting social contacts, that figure is down at 236 per 100,000, which is below the national average of 240 and places the city at 121st on the list nationally.
Nottingham’s rate is now half of what it was when placed into Tier 3 last month and the Council Leader, who calls this a “dramatic and impressive turnaround,” says it wouldn’t be reasonable for Government to return the city to its previous grading.
It is particularly important in order to support local businesses which have been forced to close again during the past few weeks.
Councillor Mellen is now calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson, below, to ensure this is taken into account when areas are allocated new tiers tomorrow.
He said: “The efforts that Nottingham and its people have made over the past month should not be underplayed. At the end of October, we had the highest Covid-19 infection rates in the country and all eyes were on the city to see how we would respond.
“I’m proud to say that we have responded very well – rates have been coming down dramatically and consistently over the past 40 days.
“While we will never be complacent about the ongoing threat of this virus, we are now below the national average because everyone has pulled together, followed the rules and looked out for each other.
“We feel that people in Nottingham have worked hard to bring down the rate of Covid-19 in our communities and among our older population – and we feel our position in the tier system should reflect this.
“We would like the opportunity to build on Nottingham’s successful partnership work in a way that allows us more freedom to reopen key parts of our economy: to keep restaurants and indoor entertainment venues open and to ensure our city can begin to reopen in a way that is safe, supported and protected.”
