• I WRITE to express my appreciation of all council workers, managers and elected members who are playing such a significant role in helping us to stay safe and healthy during this pandemic.

The crisis has brought a long overdue appreciation of NHS staff and, belatedly, care home workers who have been working tirelessly to save individual lives as well as maintaining our general health.

I am not sure that most people realise public health, adult social care, and the commissioning of care homes, are the responsibility of the council.

Despite the Tory (and coalition) government starving local authorities of money over the last decade, councils remain the unsung heroes of this crisis.

Most of the time, many of us barely notice the council’s services; if functioning well, they are inconspicuous except to those in need, for whom they provide an invaluable safety net.

However, councils maintain our roads and open spaces; collect and recycle our rubbish; identify environmental hazards; co-ordinate our schools and colleges; build, maintain and allocate housing; support developments in sustainable, environmentally friendly technology; support vulnerable children and monitor care homes and home care services.

They also carry out countless complicated administrative tasks on behalf of central government such as assessing universal credit applications; registering births, deaths and marriages; collecting business rates; assessing planning applications and so on.

In the current climate, they are having to make and review countless decisions every day and I know that some are exhausted by the strain of ensuring, as far as possible, that such decisions are beneficial, moral and financially responsible.

The Tory antipathy to local government and decision making is well known and evident throughout the punitive actions of the last decade but councils continue to reinvent themselves, to develop innovative solutions and to hold a moral line about priorities.

Councillors, managers and workers know and care about their borough and are much better placed to serve their communities than the profit-making companies that the council has been forced to outsource services to.

It is easy to find fault with the council, they cannot please us all and, of course, they make mistakes, but this should not blind us to the commitment, competence and care with which they try so hard to deploy services for the greatest good.

Let us support our nurses, doctors and care home workers to the hilt but let us also show our appreciation for all public services and especially the hard work of our local public servants, the London Borough of Camden.

LESLEY CAMPBELL
Camden resident for 50 years