Monmouthshire County Council has published a report showing the progress made against its Corporate Plan during 2019/20, and its response to the Coronavirus pandemic over the past seven months.

This report describes progress against the five strategic goals the council has set, and shows what the council has been doing during the coronavirus pandemic to keep people safe, help stop the spread of the virus and reach out to those who need help the most.

Progress includes:

• A focus on early intervention and prevention to improve outcomes for vulnerable children
• Proactively contacting local businesses to provide support and payment of funding to help them as they deal with the impact of the pandemic and to support jobs
• The declaration of a Climate Emergency and development of a strategy and action plan to respond
• Development of a network of community support that brings a range of agencies together with a shared purpose of supporting people's wellbeing, this proved vital as we worked with volunteers to support vulnerable people through the pandemic
• Rapid acceleration of our digital capabilities to enable the organisation to function remotely during the pandemic

Following publication of the annual report, Councillor Paul Jordan, Cabinet Member for Governance said:

“The report provides residents with information on how the council has performed against its goals in 2019/20, but it goes beyond this to assess how it has provided support to the community during such a challenging time in recent months. During the pandemic we have diverted our resources to provide a range of support to residents and business including providing hub schools for the children of key workers during lockdown, made phone calls to 3000 shielding households in our county, paid millions of pounds in grants to support local jobs and businesses, and helped co-ordinate the community volunteering response.

“The situation we are in remains uncertain, we will continue to review our plans and evaluate progress so residents understand our aims and what we are doing to deliver them.”

The full plan, called ‘Corporate Business Plan Annual Report, 2019/20’, is available to view on www.monmouthshire.gov.uk/improvement