Pandemic leader doubts public would lockdown again

The man who helped lead the North East's response to the Covid pandemic believes the public would be far less willing to follow similar restrictions again.

As the fifth anniversary of the first Covid lockdown is marked, Nick Forbes, who led Newcastle Council between 2011 and 2022, said he was proud of the way the region responded in the first months of the outbreak.

But he also said he fears the government handling of the crisis and its politicisation, had undermined the response that made the initial 2020 lockdown effective.

He said there had been "scepticism" that the message to reduce social would be "taken seriously", but that it had been in the region.

"They acted to protect their families, their neighbours and the NHS," Forbes, who was also the Labour group leader of the Local Government Association, said.

"Looking back, one of the things I am most struck by is what a sense of collective responsibility people in the region had.

"Sadly that wasn't reflected by some of the actions going on in government at the time."

Forbes says public unity fractured when the government began to impose regional restrictions which often confused local leaders and the public.

"The later ones when we started to get into arguments about tiers and different restrictions for different parts of the country got ever more chaotic and confusing and undermined the whole concept of acting as a nation," he said.

"We used to dread Fridays because we knew that was when the government would announce which areas of the country were going to face restrictions for the coming week. Often the announcement was made before we knew the details.

"Of course the council was then flooded with people asking what it meant. Could they get married? Could they go to funerals":[]}