The conference begins at 2.00 pm
The Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham will be joined by Deputy Mayor Sir Richard Leese, Chair of the GM Health and Social Care Partnership Board and Cllr Andrew Western, GM Green city-region lead today.
We are now going to questions:
Care Homes
BBC Radio Manchester have raised a question saying that all residents who fall ill are being given a 28 day Statement of Intent notice and told they won’t be taken to hospital, even if the symptoms they show aren’t related to Covid. case of woman with urine infection given a notice. Worries older people being left to die when there’s plenty of space in hospitals.
Both Sir Richard and Andy Burnham both say that if that is the case they would condone it and Sir Richard has asked whether the evidence of this can be presented to him
Green issues
Cllr Western says that we should encourage the shift in transport in any way we can.
We will see a short term rise in car use says Andy burnham but I am optimistic that we can grow back greener.We won’t to press ahead with bus reform, electric charging points and the implementation of a new bike hire scheme
“we want to make Manchester City Centre a pedestrian zone and prevent through traffic” says Sir Richard Leese
Education
Andy Burnham says that he strongly agrees with council’s having the flexibilty to decide on whether schools should open-We should give each area some leeway in making the decisions-I will support any of our ten councils in whatever decision they make on the opening of schools
Cllr Andrew Weston is now speaking-One of the principle things that we are looking at is building back cleaner and greener.Our air quality has improved dramatically during the lockdown he says.
He has announced that the start of the clean air zone will begin to be implemented a year later than planned in 2022 but he doesn’t believe that a year’s delay will affect it reaching its goal two years later in 2024
Sir Richard Leese is now speaking-This is the fourth successive week that the numbers have fallen
We are passed crisis in PPE says Sir Richard.He gives interesting numbers of the supply of PPE into the region-5 million items have arrived from outside the region, 19 million has come from within the region
Andy has begun by saying this is the most improved since the start of the crisis- 477 new cases, the numbers admitted to hospital is around 20 a day and there are around 700 people in hospital.Just under a third of care homes are still reporting cases
Metrolink services will increase in frequency from the 20 minute service to a 12 minute service-without a significant release of funding the service cannot be expanded further
