Council’s Chief Executive reports on Edinburgh’s response to Covid-19

The council’s Chief Executive presented a report in the form of a set of slides on the city’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic to the Policy and Sustainability committee today.

It included a lot of detail, but one thing in particular rankled with us.

Importantly for The Edinburgh Reporter, as an independent news outlet, Andrew Kerr, the Chief Executive said during this presentation, that there was a variety of messaging about Covid-19 issued through their Communications team, and in his view they had fulfilled this communications need simply by advertising in the Edinburgh Evening News.

We are advised that the latest print circulation figure for the Edinburgh Evening News is 18,362 each day, although a couple of other senior newspaper contacts tell us that the circulation is closer to being between 10-14,000 per day.

See the second of our tweets below for our immediate reaction. (We nearly choked on the first…)

The Chief Executive says that the council fulfils its remit by just advertising the message in the Evening News.

And there you have it. The Chief Executive of Scotland’s capital city @andychariots says that they have fulfilled their communications remit during Covid-19 simply by placing ads in The Edinburgh Evening News @EmmaMeese #saveindependentnews

— Edinburgh Reporter (@EdinReporter) May 14, 2020

So back to the substance of the meeting…..

The council’s Covid-19 response began on 27 February 2020 when the Corporate Leadership Team first met.

The Chief Executive’s report is fairly detailed and shows how the council is working behind the scenes to protect both their 18,000 employees and Edinburgh’s population of around 500,000, in particular the vulnerable.

The ‘report’ was eventually approved and, following a lengthy discussion around democracy and transparency of procedure, mainly promoted by the Conservative Group, the meeting agreed to add in a ‘dashboard’ in future reports.

The committee will however delegate to the Chief Executive along with the Council Leader and Deputy Leader to explore what measures can be added to that dashboard, based on officer capacity and available data.

Discussion

The Conservatives questioned why the Chief Executive had not produced an official written report, commenting it ought to have been presented in that form in their view. They also asked for the additional figures and numbers to be added in the form of a dashboard for future meetings, largely agreed to in the final vote.

They asked that this item is repeated at each committee meeting as the pandemic unfolds. This would give details of support for businesses and also the presence of Covid-19 in, and safety measures employed in care homes.

The Conservative leader Cllr Iain Whyte said that all of the information should be made public so that the opposition parties can hold the Chief Executive and the Council Leader and Deputy Leader to account. He said: “It’s very important not to delegate this away to two councillors and not a committee of 15.”

Cllr Hutchison backed him up saying that this committee is the correct forum for these things to be discussed in public, and decisions to be made.

Cllr Melanie Main said that a lot of the Chief Executive’s report is historic and that it would be good to have more up to date information included in the way of a dashboard. But she said that the Greens could not support the Conservative request as it was just ‘too prescriptive’, and she thought it should remain flexible in view of the fact that the situation is fast-moving.

The Council Chief Executive said that he would distribute all up to date information to all members, and not just those on the Policy and Sustainability Committee which is, apart from some planning committees, the only substantive committee running the city at this time.

Cllr Rankin suggested that councillors should see the first iteration of any dashboard before discussing amendments to it, and any further inclusions in the report, in any detail.

Cllr Jim Campbell asked if the integration of health and social care had meant that in Scotland we perhaps had a better response. The Chief Executive confirmed that he thought there was a real advantage, and had led to a swifter operational response.

Cllr Nick Cook raised the matter of the Nike conference held in the city in late February. He asked why the Convener of the Governance Risk and Best Value committee wasn’t told about the Covid-19 cases which had resulted there at the same time as other senior councillors. The Chief Executive told him that following the Group Leaders meeting (held behind closed doors) he had nothing to add.