Community urged to help aid county's recovery

PR Date: Friday, 10 July 2020 - 9:30am

Community leaders, groups and other representatives are being urged to complete an online survey to help shape Hertfordshire’s recovery from the impacts of coronavirus.

The call comes from Hertfordshire's local resilience forum (LRF), a countywide alliance of local authorities, NHS, emergency services, the local enterprise partnership and others supporting communities through the impacts of the pandemic.

Getting a wide range of feedback is key to the county setting the right priorities for the weeks and months ahead as it begins its social and economic recovery.  Now the deadline for submitting responses has been extended to the end of July.

The LRF survey is open to responses covering the following categories:

• Humanitarian
• Health and wellbeing
• Economic impact on businesses
• Infrastructure
• Environmental
• Resourcing in commercial and public sector
• Public sector and community service funding

The survey also asks organisations how they could support Hertfordshire’s recovery, and to highlight specific issues they think need to be tackled. The findings of the survey will then be used as a starting point to give community groups confidence and reassurance as the recovery work across the county begins. 

Cllr Linda Haysey, the LRF’s lead for community engagement, and East Herts District Council leader, said: “We have been overwhelmed by the response of people and businesses in Hertfordshire to the pandemic.  Now we are cautiously moving into a new phase focussed on the recovery and rebuilding of our communities.

"It is hard to overstate the importance of us setting the right priorities for that journey. That is why we are asking all our communities to help us - especially those who can sometimes be hidden, or who find it hard to make their voice heard. To those people we are saying please take the time to go online and complete the survey."

To complete the survey, visit the survey webpage.

Hertfordshire’s local resilience forum (LRF) is a multi-agency partnership made up of representatives from local public services, including the emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, the Environment Agency, the Highways Agency, the Local Enterprise Partnership, as well as other partners in the military and voluntary sector who provide a valuable contribution to LRF work in emergency preparedness.

The LRF plans and prepares for, and coordinates the response to, localised incidents and national emergencies. It works to identify potential risks and produces emergency plans to either prevent or mitigate the impact of any incident on local communities.