Lockdown exit: 'Cautious optimism' over Fife's road to recovery

A meeting of the Fife Partnership Board saw figures from the council, NHS, education institutions, business and social care discuss how the Kingdom "builds back better" as it recovers from the shock of the pandemic.

Civic chiefs are buoyant about Fife's prospects for an easing of lockdown after vaccinations passed the 100,000 mark on Monday and young children returned to school.

However, they have stressed that this will be a gradual process across all public services, rather than a move to 'normal' conditions overnight.

"Our focus has continued to be on how we respond to the 'four harms' while still in this emergency phase," Fife Council chief executive Steve Grimmond said.

The "four harms" refer to health consequences related, and not related, to Covid-19, as well as the social and economic impacts of the pandemic.

He continued: "No-one is expecting an immediate release from the restrictions, and our continued focus is on education protection.

"We've seen the return of a significant cohort of young people to school this week. We're anticipating a return to the levels approach - albeit this unlikely to happen in the immediate short term."

Tricia Marwick, who chairs NHS Fife, said healthcare staff had been "working their butts off" to provide as many other services as possible while battling the virus.

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"We are trying to make sure that we manage expectations of people in terms of when they're getting their vaccination and when the NHS will be back up and running (as normal)," she told the committee.

"It's going to take a while to recover.

"But in Fife we've never stopped cancer surgery, we've still done operations, we're looking at how best we open up but we need to do so cautiously.

"We need to make sure we're dealing with the pandemic and not bringing it into our hospitals."

Mrs Marwick said staff were "exhausted" by the virus, with some working 18-hour days to meet demand.

"We can't simply turn a tap back on - it's not going to happen," she added.

Scottish Enterprise said business confidence was still low, even with millions of £s of support being poured into local companies every month. Firms are reporting increased costs, paperwork and delays as a result of the virus and complications caused by Brexit.

Lawrence Wyper, who heads up the economic development body's Place Team engaging with local councils, said: "While business confidence is relatively low we're starting to see a gradual increase, relating to the vaccine roll-out.

"There are a range of messages coming out - that is not necessarily surprising.

"But we hope that we might gradually see an increase in confidence as the vaccine programme starts to have more of an impact and there's more clarity as to the timescales for a staged movement from lockdown."

The partnership board, chaired by council co-leader David Alexander, reviewed reports on how Fife improves its approaches to tackling poverty, economic recovery, building stronger communities and responding to the climate emergency.

Council officers believe the exit from lockdown, and the end of the pandemic in general, represents a rare opportunity to reform services, ranging from welfare support to community engagement, to make them more effective at what they do.

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