Councils can be proud of our ongoing leadership and response in this crisis. When the chips are down we stand up, leading the humanitarian effort, supporting businesses, filling fridges and emptying bins, delivering medicines, housing the homeless and so much more.
We will continue this effort into a further period of national restrictions. Our determination to come together around people in places, our agility to respond and to innovate, and our knowledge of every family in every street all put us in the best position to best beat this health and economic crisis.
We must all be relentless in making the case to the Government: back us and we'll deliver.
Whitehall and town halls must all focus on the challenge ahead of us. And so it is desperately disappointing that the two million people in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset will have their district councils plunged into the anguish of potential reform, on top of trying to deal with the health and economic emergency.
We must end this debate now, so that all areas can focus on the crisis in their communities. And the Government must draw learning and strength from our experience of this crisis so far, and that means boosting local collaboration, local agility, and the local connection and responsiveness into every family and business in our communities.
The coronavirus crisis is proving again what 300 pieces of genuinely independent academic work has already shown, that bigger government is not better government.
It is local leadership, embedded in local community, which will beat this virus.
Cllr John Fuller OBE is chairman of the District Councils' Network
