I’ve received correspondence recently from residents concerned about the numbers of people on the seafront. As the weather improves, and with international travel still prohibited, we can expect more people visit.

Beyond this, it’s also clear to me that there are also plenty of reasons why our fantastic city and beautiful seafront attracts both residents and visitors – and has always been one of our city’s key strengths.

Yet another strength has been the dedicated, local response to the Covid-19 pandemic, keeping infection rates low so that all living and working here have some certainty of being protected from the virus.

So it’s critical that we continue to understand the pressures on our city’s response to the roadmap out of lockdown and ensure both residents and our emergency services are protected. Many will recall the scenes last summer that caused Bournemouth to declare a major incident, as local services such as traffic management, waste, seafront teams and health workers raised the alarm calling for extra help to manage visitors.

So while there is no doubt that we want events and visitors to return to our city – and we are cautiously optimistic about this – it must be done safely and when the city can manage cases. However the reality remains that if the government is serious about “recovery” for the economy, they need to ensure public services are in good position to cope with the changes this roadmap will bring. Greens were recently successful in proposing a new budget for our city that focuses on our economic recovery. Council teams have also mobilised quickly to respond to the latest warm weather – moving our seafront summer plan into the winter, increasing bins and bin collections as well as on-the-spot fines to deal with litter. I’ve also been working closely with campaigners Surfers Against Sewage, one of the city’s clearest voices on the devastating impact of waste on our oceans and marine life.

Our rapid response to the warm weather only serves as a reminder of the extra resources that may be needed come summer. The government’s response to the critical task of economic recovery for local communities has in part been to propose a “levelling up” fund to ensure prosperity across the UK – but has again dodged the question of long-term funding for local government. Worse still, analysis from the Financial Times has found Conservative-run councils were consistently given higher priority for funding, even if the government’s own measure of deprivation found those areas were in less need than other parts of the country. In the same week that test and trace, a contract given to Conservative supporters, has been found to have cost all of us £37 billion, once again the Conservative Party has looked after its own.

There can be no dispute that all communities deserve increased funding after the pandemic but instead of “rates for mates” we need planned, long-term funding support. I am absolutely clear that as a coastal city with a vibrant hospitality, tourism and events sector, Brighton and Hove will come under additional pressure and need additional support. Yet despite the need to “level up”, the terms of this new fund leave our city with little chance of success. Same too with the “shared prosperity fund”, despite a clear pipeline of innovative projects locally; from industry leading hydrogen energy hubs to retrofitting, the government has not yet confirmed how bids to this fund can support us. Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, funds like this will be needed more than ever.

The government’s last budget failed to deal with the challenge of support for public services too – with no new funding for public health, NHS spending and of course a miserly one per cent pay rise for our nurses.

We’ve said from the start that support for local communities simply cannot be piecemeal. To respond to community need, councils in particular need greater powers too, to help communities tackle everything from pavement parking to rogue landlords and Airbnbs.

Nothing has highlighted this more than the pandemic – when public services sprang into action to plug gaps when key services like test and trace to the delivery of PPE failed. Brighton and Hove, like countless councils, have been shoring up support for residents, providing access to food for those in need and helping people navigate the recent crisis. This week these issues have been captured by the Parliamentary group tasked with looking at devolution. Calling for transfer of powers from central to local government to be turbo charged, they are clear: this will be essential if communities are truly to recover.