Former Brighton council leader opens up on managing pandemic

Nancy Platts, councillor for East Brighton, served as the leader of the Labour administration of Brighton and Hove City Council from May 2019 to July 2020.

On the two year anniversary of the first lockdown she said the enormous challenge the pandemic posed for public safety led to her feeling she was heading into the unknown, and being forced to make extraordinarily difficult decisions.

'Killer virus in the city' - The Argus front page after Brighton and Hove's first reported case of Covid-19 in February 2020

Brighton and Hove reported its first case of the virus on February 6, 2020, thrusting the city into the international spotlight after becoming only the second city in the UK to report an infection of Covid-19.

Cllr Platts said: “There was one isolated incident, with somebody coming back from a skiing trip. The initial impression we had was that it was something quite infectious and that person was going to be isolated.

“In my experience, and for most people I guess, is that you hear about these things from time to time and there’s an expectation that everything will be managed and everybody will be kept safe.”

Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case, and more incidents of the virus were reported in the city in the following days.

The director of public health became involved as the virus spread in the city, with Cllr Platts explaining that the advice they were receiving at the time was Covid would be a “fairly mild disease” for those who caught it, and that there were quite simple solutions to prevent yourself and others falling ill.

“I think that gave us the impression at the time that this was something that we were going to get over quite quickly, which of course turned out not to be true,” Cllr Platts said.

Cllr Nancy Platts and the council's chief executive Geoff Raw at a press conference in February 2020, encouraging residents to wash their hands to stop the spread of the virus

On February 11, less than a week after the first case of Covid-19 in Brighton and Hove, council bosses, including Cllr Platts, held signs that read ‘Catch it, Bin it, Kill it’ at an emergency press conference at Hove Town Hall.

Journalists from across the country descended on the city for the announcement, with the public told to “practise good hygiene” to stop the spread of the virus.

“We just repeated the advice, because that’s what I was being told we needed to do - wash your hands and take good hygiene measures and then it would all be okay,” Cllr Platts said.

She explained that, at the time, cases were being detected and isolated fairly quickly and that there was an “overriding impression that we were going to be able to keep it under control and it wasn’t going to be too serious”.

She said: “We were very confident at the time that we’d be going ahead with a full programme of events in the summer. I remember telling people that’s what we’d be doing and we had got everything under control.”

'Just do whatever it takes'

However, the situation soon took a drastic turn. Although reported cases remained relatively low in Brighton and Hove, the virus’ spread began to accelerate across the country, with dozens of cases being reported each day in early March 2020.

“Very, very quickly, things spiralled,” Cllr Platts said.

“We started to realise this was becoming a lot more serious and that it was something that was going to be quite difficult to control.

“We started to see pictures on the TV of lockdowns happening in other countries and I think, even then, there was some hope that that might not happen to us and that somehow we might be able to keep the UK safe from that.”

As those pictures unfolded on all of our television screens and as the pandemic worsened, Cllr Platts explained that running the council became “hand-to-mouth management of whatever was happening that day”, from a lack of PPE in care homes to how to move services so people could work from home.

Councils across the country all began demanding the same resources, and Cllr Platts said that MPs from the city began lobbying on behalf of Brighton and Hove to make sure everything was done to keep people safe.

She said: “At the same time, we were still trying to deal with all of the day-to-day issues - we deliver over 700 services as a local authority and none of that stopped.

“I have not got enough praise for the council officers that worked so incredibly hard and juggled so many things, especially parents, in order to get through and carry on delivering services.”

She also said there were regular calls with the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government Robert Jenrick, with him at one point telling council officials to “just do whatever it takes,” Cllr Platts recalled.

Housing the homeless

An early challenge the council faced was the task of sheltering hundreds of homeless people across the city.

Cllr Platts said the initial plan was to get them into one of the major hotels in the city, but that task was made more difficult as the government began telling hotels to close.

She said: “It became a bit confusing and quite hard work to try and place all the homeless people because, rather than getting them into one major venue which would reduce the number of staff we needed to manage that venue, we ended up having to put them in lots of smaller venues around the city. 

“We then needed more staff, and then some people weren’t happy about people being housed in those particular locations.”

After providing housing and hot food for these people, she added that she felt like the council had to battle to get money from the government to cover the cost.

“On the one hand, it’s great to have the freedom to be told ‘do whatever it takes’, but you do need to know that the money is coming with it, and you need the government to issue consistent messaging around how they expect you to manage this operation,” she said.

'It was like going into the unknown'

Eventually, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made the announcement that the country was to go into lockdown, initially for three weeks.

Cllr Platts said that, while the announcement came as no surprise to her, she was left with a sense of sadness.

“I remember the chief executive saying before we entered the first lockdown that if this got really serious, it could take up to two years to resolve.

“I felt the enormity of the task ahead of me as leader of the council and being responsible for the city, doing something of which I had no experience.

“It was a bit like going into the unknown, and the sense that most people around you are going into the unknown.”

Streets across Brighton were left eerily quiet when lockdown came into force in late March 2020

For Cllr Platts, the scale and severity of the pandemic hit her most during a particular conversation about the council’s preparedness for the number of deaths the pandemic could cause.

“I think the most shocking conversation, and when it really hit how serious this could be, was when we started to work out if we had enough mortuary space and if we had enough body bags.

“That’s when it really hit me that this was incredibly serious and frightening.”

'Do not come to Brighton'

While the country went into lockdown, the sun came out and the mercury started to rise, which tempted some to head to the coast to enjoy the warmer weather.

Cllr Platts said she was forced to go against her instincts as a council leader and tell people to not come to the city.

“I remember it being quite a warm sunny Easter and, because everyone started to want to come to Brighton on the train and drive, I can remember having to go on to the media and say ‘please do not come to Brighton’.

“Everything told me that as council leader I should be encouraging people to come to Brighton and be opening up the economy."

We are urging people to stay away from Brighton & Hove this Easter

We are also asking residents to:

- only go out when absolutely necessary
- exercise close to home
- keep distance of 2m (6ft) from other people

Learn more ➡️ https://t.co/V9KOpz1eJh#StayHomeSaveLives pic.twitter.com/X32a5WMIXz

— Brighton & Hove City Council (@BrightonHoveCC) April 12, 2020

She said: “We should have been welcoming visitors in; that was the time of year when Brighton is really buzzing and we have lots of events and loads of people, and yet we were talking about having police at the train stations, stopping cars and having to stop people queuing outside fish and chip shops and all the things people normally want to come and do.

“That was really difficult, because I was really conscious of the impact on the economy and there was this tension between really wanting to keep people safe and concern about people whose businesses were going to start to go under because they weren’t getting anyone into their shops, restaurants or cafes.”

Government's end of free testing a 'massive mistake'

Looking back two years on since the first lockdown was announced, Cllr Platts said that people across the city did brilliantly in protecting themselves and others from the virus, and that communities rallied together to support one another during such unprecedented times.

She said: “Many chefs across the city gave their time for nothing and were cooking meals that could be delivered. Hotels, cafes and restaurants donated their surplus food, that would have otherwise been thrown away, to local food banks.

“Everyone was really being conscious of keeping themselves safe, so the message had gone through but, at the same time, people were finding ways to work around it in order to look after their neighbours, and that was incredible to see.”

However, Cllr Platts warned that the end of free Covid testing at the end of this month by the government is a “massive mistake”.

“Some people are very scared of being back out amongst other people and scared of catching Covid because they’re vulnerable. Now they’re carrying that fear with them all the time.

“One way in which we could protect them is by making sure that we all keep testing for the virus, but the likelihood of people doing that if they’ve got to pay for them is surely going to be lower.

“If there’s one thing the government could have done in order to try and keep people safe, it would have been to keep free testing.”