REDCAR and Cleveland Council faced two “catastrophic” events in the form of a cyber attack on its IT systems earlier this year and the developing covid-19 pandemic, a senior official has said.

Rob Mitchell, head of policy and performance at the authority, said the timing of the two things together were quite incredible, but praised the response to both.

Mr Mitchell gave a presentation to members of the council’s adults and communities scrutiny and improvement committee outlining the impact of the coronavirus.

Mr Mitchell said: “Two catastrophic events running into each other is utterly unprecedented and underlines how well the council and the whole staff team has performed in order to maintain services.”

He described how the recovery phase from the impact of the virus was likely to last many years and would be an evolving picture.

Members were told of some of the measures taken to date by the local authority which included:

  • Closing a number of frontline services during lockdown including visitor attractions and libraries
  • Establishing an emergency centre to bring together key people, along with a community support hub
  • Implementing working from home on a “grand scale” to help protect staff
  • Creating an emergency fund for the community and voluntary support sector.

Mr Mitchell said plans were now being produced across the council to focus on what future services may look like, with the aim of being as resilient as possible.

However he warned: “We can spend an awful lot of time trying to work out what the future might look like and how people might behave.

“The reality is we don’t really know this, but we can focus our attention on building resilience within our teams, managers, leaders, at all levels.

Patrick Rice, corporate director of adults and communities, said staff had worked together and put residents of the borough at the heart of everything they were doing.

Mr Rice said by early June there had been 39 deaths in care home settings in Redcar and Cleveland where Covid-19 had been a factor in the deaths.

He said out of 52 care homes, 16 had reported outbreaks due to Covid-19 to date, although this was much lower in comparison to other parts of the North-East.

The meeting also heard that there had been a noticeable increase in demand for domestic abuse support services in Redcar and Cleveland, which was proving a “real challenge”. Referrals to independent domestic violence advisors had increased from 20 a week in February to 49 at the beginning of June.