Praise for Covid PPE teams as Nottinghamshire County Council approves operations step-down

The council will launch a three-month programme to dissolve its protective equipment teams from next month, with both its in-house warehouse and workforce to be disbanded by June 30.

It comes as part of the Government’s ‘Living with Covid’ plans, announced at the start of the year, which will see Personal Protective Equipment supply for key services moved from the council’s resources to a national, online database.

The council’s teams have been supplying equipment to social care, health, education and other services since the start of the pandemic almost exactly two years ago this week.

Since then, the authority has dealt with more than 7,000 requests and distributed more than 2.5 million items across the county and to neighbouring authorities.

The equipment has been sourced via the council from the Government’s PPE portal since July last year, before being distributed to services upon request.

But now the council has approved plans to step down its operations following the Government’s post-pandemic strategy being published.

The Government’s plan states all PPE users currently sourcing equipment from the authority will be able to access it directly from the national portal – meaning the council’s service is no longer needed.

The authority will begin the three-month step-down from April, running until the end of June, to support organisations in moving to the national portal.

It will also oversee the distribution and managing of excess stock in the council’s Huthwaite-based storage warehouse, with the warehouse to be decommissioned once the three-month window is over.

The council has allocated £30,800 towards staffing costs for the three-month project.

A further £26,800 has been outlined for costs relating to the warehouse facility and both the storage and distribution of PPE items.

Councillors approved both funds during the authority’s finance committee on Monday.

Speaking in the meeting, Councillor Mike Pringle, who represents Ollerton, praised the council’s staff for their efforts during the pandemic.

He said: “Delivering 2.7 million items, it’s exceptional – but not only that, to prioritise those most in need and to forward plan for the items [we] have left is a knockout as far as I’m concerned.

“I think the council has got this absolutely right.”

Coun Andre Camilleri added: “Hopefully we won’t need this amount of PPE in the future and this goes down to how hard this council has worked to handle what was a very difficult situation.

“We have handled this extremely well.”

The Independent Alliance asked questions on the future of the Huthwaite warehouse and what will happen to excess stock once the operation comes to an end.

In response, Kaj Ghattaora, group manager for procurement on the authority, said the council has four to five months’ worth of excess stock which will be distributed to community partners by the end of June.

She added the authority has not purchased the stock, meaning it will not cost the council to have it “sitting on our shelves”, but she assured councillors the stock will be “redistributed appropriately”.

On the future of the Huthwaite PPE warehouse, she said: “We will be utilising it, it will either be let out or we’ve got alternative options if we need to upscale back to [PPE supply].

“That will include storing our resilience, but that won’t include storing that at the big facility at Huthwaite because it is huge. We will repurpose that.”

Coun Richard Jackson, chairman of the committee, added: “The whole point [of this] is moving from PPE being locally-supplied to being supplied by the Government.

“Barring a horrendous new variant or something nobody can foresee, we’re not going to need the capacity for it.”

Message from editor, Sam Jackson: The Worksop Guardian is full of local news, features and sport plus great columnists, puzzles pages and much more. Save up to 20% off the cover price of the Worksop Guardian by taking out a print subscription by clicking here or calling 0330 123 5950 (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm)