Regular updates from Lynne Doherty (Leader of the Council) and Nigel Lynn (Chief Executive) on the work of West Berkshire Council.

Coronavirus Weeknote

Firstly, this week we welcome Nigel Lynn to West Berkshire Council. For those of you who have been following these weeknotes on a regular basis you will know Nick and Lynne first started them to keep residents informed about Covid 19 and its impact on our district. We then decided to continue to write to give you an insight of our work and our views here at the Council. We both agree that this is important part of our communication strategy and will be co-authoring them going forward.

It has been another busy fortnight here in West Berkshire with the district having been at the centre of a national news story and, as we have mentioned, a new Chief Executive starting with us.

It’s very likely that you will have seen the reports in the media last weekend about inaccurate Covid test results which originated in a laboratory in Wolverhampton. We were first made aware of possible issues with test results from the Newbury Showground testing site a couple of weeks ago. Some residents had contacted us to express their concern and our Public Health Team had noticed an unusually high rate of negative results among the tests undertaken at the site. In light of this evidence and analysis, we quickly escalated our suspicions to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) for further investigation.