Bucks Council Leader looks back on dealing with a global pandemic while uniting 5 local authorities
9 days before launching Bucks Council found themselves in a national lockdown
Last updated 18th Mar 2021
Buckinghamshire Council launched last year under difficult circumstances.
On March 23rd 2020 a national lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 9 days before Buckinghamshire Council was set to launch.
After years of debate, votes and planning 5 local authorities were set to start a new financial year as one unitary authority.
The coronavirus pandemic and announced lockdown changed plans, as Buckinghamshire Council's Leader Martin Tett explains:
"Challenging would probably be the biggest understatement of the decade. We had some hints lockdown would come in but it happened quite suddenly.
"Instead of having people in the office, getting ready for the launch making sure the new council was a success, we had to change that completely.
"You'd expect that we as we were a new unitary authority and only the top 3 levels of management had been put in place we would face lots of challenges.
"We did of course, but it gave us a reason to come together against the common enemy.
"The common enemy was Covid and the common goal was support our local community and helping the vulnerable.
"There was a capability that the organisations had that individual smaller district councils wouldn't have had."
Lockdown meant some services had to be suspended, including household waste.
This was one of the biggest issues residents in Buckinghamshire told Martin about:
"There are some areas where people did feel really impacted.
"So we had to immediately close household waste sites, and that is something people constantly use there is always a queue. As soon as we closed them people complained because fly tipping and waste collections became an issue.
"I personally push government very hard that they needed to open as early as possible and spoke to government departments about this. And then to police because there were comments the police did not see them as essential journeys.
"That was a problem, it was the biggest things I got negative emails about and we worked hard to help them."
Tonight at 7pm, our full interview with Cllr Tett will go live on this website - so come back then to watch!