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London doesn't always know best: how the north is choosing its own pace out of lockdown

<span>Photograph: Richard Saker/the Observer</span>
Photograph: Richard Saker/the Observer

In exhausting and anxious times, a text message last week brought Emma Parker a welcome moment of light relief. “A colleague sent me an ad for the Barnard Castle Eye Test beer, the one that BrewDog has brought out,” says the Durham-based teacher. “I had a bit of a giggle at that, I have to admit. I tried to buy some, but the demand was so great the website kept crashing.”

The now infamous 60-mile round trip by Dominic Cummings to one of the north-east’s best-known tourist spots has entered political folklore. Cummings’ explanation – that the visit to Barnard Castle, on which he was accompanied by his wife and child, was undertaken to test his eyesight – has launched countless internet memes. But as Parker, a district organiser for the National Education Union (NEU), points out, the danger is that people may come to see the joke as having been at their expense, drawing their own conclusions. “I have a 14-year-old son who is autistic,” she says. “His grandparents are a vital part of his life and routines, but he hasn’t seen them for months. It was my son’s birthday last week, and, for the first time in his life, he wasn’t able to spend it with them. He had to accept the rules of lockdown. But what Cummings did undermined the basis of the discipline we need to keep up. You could see it on the beaches round here on bank holiday weekend, after the story came out. A lot more people were just thinking: ‘We’re going to get on with living.’”

The fury over the Cummings affair, and its disastrous timing as the country attempts to ease lockdown restrictions without triggering a second Covid wave, prompted three local Conservative MPs to voice their concerns in a joint statement. Richard Holden, MP for North West Durham, Paul Howell, MP for Sedgefield and Dehenna Davison, MP for Bishop Auckland wrote: “Like many of our constituents, we have spent the last few days with a feeling of disappointment, anger and frustration. The last thing we want to see is an enormous collective effort being undermined by the irresponsible actions of individuals.” But the reckless travels of Boris Johnson’s maverick adviser, and the fact that the Durham-born Cummings remains in post, are only the latest, most high-profile, grounds for local concern.

The north-east currently has the highest rate of Covid infection in Britain and the transition to a safe, socially distancing new normal will be complicated, fraught and risky. Last week, as he battled to move on from the Cummings episode, Johnson announced in Thursday’s Downing Street press conference that the government’s five tests for easing lockdown were being met. But it is becoming increasingly clear that, in regions such as the north-east, the government’s authority is not what it was at the beginning of the crisis. In the words of Martin Gannon, the leader of Gateshead’s Labour-run council: “Until now, in just about every single area, everything that has been co-ordinated by the centre has been a complete and unmitigated disaster.” Somewhat under the radar, a low-key regional rebellion has begun to take place on the basis that London doesn’t always know best. For many in a region that was deindustrialised without a proper plan for its future, that has been true for more than 30 years.

‘Cut to the bone’

Two weeks ago, Gannon joined the leader of Newcastle city council, Nick Forbes, in rejecting Johnson’s decision to drop the government’s “Stay at home” slogan in favour of the new “Stay alert” formulation. “I listened to the prime minister on that Sunday night and then talked with senior colleagues,” he told the Observer. “We decided that, given the higher R rate in the north-east, the time wasn’t right to move to that message. If we had possessed the same legislative powers as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, then we would have done as they did and stayed with the lockdown as it was.”

There are disproportionately high levels of deprivation in the north-east, so we have to be ultra-cautious in terms of advice and guidance

Alice Wiseman, Gateshead director of public health

According to Alice Wiseman, Gateshead’s director of public health: “There are disproportionately high levels of deprivation and poverty here and elsewhere in the north-east. We know that, where that is the case, there will be existing public health problems and we know that the Covid disease targets people with pre-existing conditions. So we have to be ultra-cautious here in terms of advice and guidance.”

The willingness to defy government advice in order to, as Gannon puts it, “do what’s best for Gateshead”, is born of bitter experience. For those on the frontline of local government, particularly in poorer areas, the coronavirus crisis has been a sometimes searing experience that has laid bare the flaws in a dysfunctional relationship with central government. Bluntly, and in common with other local authorities, Gateshead has felt neglected, bypassed and forced to pick up the pieces as things have gone wrong.

“Ten years of austerity had already damaged local resilience,” says Gannon. “Gateshead has lost 56% of its grant from central government. We’ve made cuts of £170m. Every part of our budget is cut to the bone now. Over 75% of it goes on care packages. We used to have a big environmental health department. That’s been cut to the bone, too.”

As the epidemic took hold in March, Gannon and his team experienced the consequences of strategic mistakes at a national level. Promises – particularly in relation to protective equipment – were not kept. “We were flagging up the absence of PPE on a daily basis,” says Wiseman. “No care home in the region had adequate access to the equipment needed to protect their residents. PPE was absolutely critical at that stage and we just didn’t have enough. It’s still a very fragile system now. In the end, we made more plastic masks locally – working ad hoc, using any 3D printers we could find – than we got through the national system.”

To the council’s astonishment, a government list of people in Gateshead who would need to be shielded and provided with food contained only 150 names. After consultation with local GPs, the council identified 15,000 locals who would need to be protected; it went deep into debt to get them provisions.

There was exasperation when, as belated moves were made in April to boost capacity to test for the virus, Whitehall contracted Deloitte to set up a drive-in test centre in the local Ikea car park. The town’s Queen Elizabeth hospital announced in the same month that it had established one of the biggest testing units in the country, but as the Deloitte centre was flooded with requests, locals reported they had been redirected to Barrow-in-Furness, more than 100 miles away. Swabs from the Ikea centre were sent 240 miles south to Milton Keynes to be analysed; by the time results came back, they were out of date and useless for slowing the spread of infection. “There just wasn’t a clear, defined purpose behind the testing,” says Wiseman. “It was just about getting to a high number and wasn’t useful locally. Why not focus resources on the Queen Elizabeth?”

Dominic Cummings in London last week.
Dominic Cummings in London last week after answering allegations that he and his family broke lockdown rules. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty

One of the most disturbing episodes came as pressure was being exerted on the council and the local foundation trust to discharge untested patients back into the community and into care homes.

“During the Easter weekend,” says Gannon, “I was contacted by a member of the council, whose father was in a care home. We had a situation. This was when there was great pressure to vacate beds in NHS hospitals to cope with a coming Covid surge. People were being discharged into care homes without being tested. We were pushed by government to increase the fees to care providers to encourage them to take people. This had led to a stand-off in the car park between the NHS and the home. Some homes were saying, ‘Yes, we’ll take anyone’; some were saying, ‘No, we’re not taking anyone, unless they have a certificate that they are Covid-free’. At this particular home, paramedics, family and managers from the home were arguing in the car park about it.”

This was happening across the country, Wiseman points out, at a point when “homes were not getting the resources they needed to be able to fully protect residents”.

‘We need regional responses’

Scarred by experience, many north-east local authorities will be determinedly going at their own pace this week, as England moves into the next phase of the Covid ordeal. Over the past fortnight, from Hartlepool to Newcastle, the region has become a hub of resistance to the government’s drive to impose a one-size-fits-all approach to reopening primary schools. Parker has organised petitions, held meetings with parents and lobbied her county council, which last week pushed the provisional start date in Durham back to the middle of next month. In Newcastle and Gateshead, the earliest reopening date will be 8 June. “Different parts of the country are at different phases of this epidemic,” says Parker. “The R rate here seems to be significantly higher and that is weighing on people’s minds a lot. Only 4% of parents we surveyed wanted to send their children back on 1 June.

Map of Covid infections in the north-east

“There are just so many unanswered questions: on how test and trace will work, and when it will truly be ready and operational; on what the science is on transmission between and from children; on what teachers or parents with vulnerable people at home are supposed to do.” A blanket approach to coming out of lockdown, she says, will not do. “We need to develop regional responses to this. Just because London or other parts of the country might be at a certain point doesn’t mean the rest of the country should follow behind.”

There was incredulity and fury at all the political capital the prime minister expended to keep Cummings

Martin Gannon, Gateshead council leader

At the Carr Hill primary school in Gateshead, the headmaster, Paul Harris, is desperate to welcome back pupils from one of the most deprived areas in the town. For the past two and a half months, the school has transformed itself into an auxiliary social service, delivering meals and offering advice to pupils’ families. “Reopening is the last thing I think about before I go to bed and it’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning,” says Harris. “We know how tough it is for some families. We know of some kids self-harming and instances of domestic abuse. You’re trying to balance the emotional and educational needs of the children, with any possible risk to the community and the need to protect your staff. We have more people in our community with pre-existing health conditions. Will it be a ticking time bomb?”

The government’s aspiration that primaries will reopen this week to reception classes, along with year one and year six pupils, will not be met, says Gannon. Instead, from 8 June at the earliest, Gateshead schools will begin to take back those pupils who most need to be at school. “It will not be a case of following a central diktat,” he says. “In collaboration with teachers, unions and the community, an assessment will be made on the basis of need, taking into account local circumstances.” Neighbouring Newcastle, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside have taken a similar approach. Sheffield has put back its start date, citing the advice of its own director of public health and concerns over the local infection rate.

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Like local authorities up and and down the country, Gateshead has racked up a mountain of debt since the epidemic began. As tax revenues and fees for parking and leisure services have collapsed, expenditure on food distribution, PPE, transport and care needs have soared. A projected £60m debt by the end of the year will eventually have to be addressed. For now though, Gannon is just focused on helping the town survive the worst of the epidemic. “I’ve stopped worrying about the money,” he says, “I’m beyond the point of worry. We’ve got to focus on getting through this next period.”

For the unlocking process to be successful, the test and trace system launched by the health minister, Matt Hancock, will have to do its job. The head of the programme, Dido Harding, has warned that it will not be fully operational until the end of June. For weeks, Gannon and his team have implored central government to make use of the expertise available in local public health networks, rather than rely on Serco-trained call-centre tracers. Finally, it seems, the message might be getting through.

“The tone and approach is changing. We haven’t seen any detail about extra resource but there seems to be a new willingness to work with us. We’ve been asked to draw up a plan to oversee local outbreak control. Twenty-five thousand people sat in call centres isn’t going to work. That needs to be bolted on to existing local capacity. With sexually transmitted diseases and food poisoning, we’ve been doing this kind of thing for years.”

Gannon is 62 and has been involved in north-east politics for 35 years. Each week, he and his wife deliver food to his mother-in-law, who lives two miles from the Cummings parental home. “I’ve been around a long time but I’ve never seen anything as extraordinary as last week,” he marvels. “All the political capital that the prime minister expended to keep him! There was incredulity and fury.” But he hopes and believes people will not follow the former local boy’s bad example: “We need our government to have authority, legitimacy and respect.” There is a crucial rider, though. “We also need it to work with us, give us the resources we need and devolve us the power to get things right. Local institutions must be trusted and empowered on the road ahead.”