Intelligence Newsletter - 25 August, 2020

Cornwall – local impact 

Economy  

• Nationally, the road traffic across all motor vehicles has returned to pre-lockdown levels. Locally, Cornwall is reporting as 6% increase in road traffic, compared to the same reporting period last year.  

Climate Impact 

• On Sunday, Cornwall’s Lithium potential featured in Countryfile with visits to United Downs and interviews of local geologists at Cornish Lithium. Find the coverage on iPlayer.  
• Cornwall has been selected to help kick start the nature recovery under the Local Nature Recovery Strategies pilot that will map the most valuable sites and habitats for wildlife restoration.  

And in other Cornish news…  

• The Cornish Shuffle dance is a new dance craze! The craze, initiated by a local NHS psychiatrist, hopes to increase social connections and benefits our physical and mental health. You can visit a dedicated YouTube channel and to see a breakdown of the steps and a demo video. 

National Impact

Crime 

• Panorama investigation reveals that domestic abuse has surged during lockdown. An FOI from UK police forces found that one domestic abuse call was made every 30 seconds in the first seven weeks of lockdown. These reports included kidnap, arson, revenge porn and poisoning.  

 Housing  

• July 2020 was the busiest month for buying houses in 10 years, according to Rightmove. They report that more than £37bn worth of property sales were conducted. In July 2019, £25bn worth of sales were conducted. 
• During lockdown it is estimated that nearly 18,000 households across England have been made homeless. From FOI responses to 212 councils, 22,798 households applied for support after 1st April. The article outlines that this is only reporting 2/3rds of England’s households, which they estimate as 33,000 households for all local authorities were made homeless. The final figure removes the 15,000 households that were allocated housing under the governments scheme.  
• A two year partnership between Tesco Mobile and Crisis (the homelessness charity) will enable homeless people digital connectivity. The scheme will provide £700,000 worth of smartphones and internet data to homeless people in England. Crisis has already provided 1000 mobile phones since the start of lockdown, and is now urging the public to donate their old smartphones. The scheme will support connection to family and access to health care guidance.  

Social Care and Health  

• Imperial College London researchers have found evidence linking Diabetes Type 1 to Coronavirus in children. During the heights on the pandemic, the Imperial College NHS trust saw a significant increase of diabetes type 1 admissions – on further investigation, a number of these had positive coronavirus testing.   
• Specialist public health registrars have raised fears that scrapping the Public Health England organisation would risk a second coronavirus wave. This follows the announcement from the Health Secretary last Tuesday that said the PHE will be replaced by the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP).  
• Research from Public Health England (PHE) reveals there was an outbreak of coronavirus at only one in 10,000 schools when some reopened for select year groups in June. Outbreaks in schools were typically small in size and more than half involved just one secondary case, the report added, with PHE insisting they were all “successfully contained”. 
• Reports of depression during lockdown increase to 19.2% (1 in 5) from 9.7% (1 in 10). A number of factors were found to feed into this, including unexpected expenditure worries (1 in 3 adults), unemployment, loneliness (61.7%) and future uncertainty. According to the ONS there were no statistically significant differences between rural and urban areas. More than half of all adults experienced high level of anxiety during the lockdown. There are a number of factors that have been associated with the development of moderate to sever depressive symptoms, pre and post COVID, which have fed into this increase:  

• There was also a significant increase of disabled adults (around a third) experiencing moderate to severe depressive symptoms: 

• In conjunction with the Universities of Oxford and Manchester, Public Health England and the Wellcome Trust, the ONS have published their COVID Infection Survey which looks at the characteristics of people that have tested positive for COVID. The conclusions: 
  • Evidence shows that Asian or Asian British individuals are more likely to test positive for COVID than White individuals.  
  • One-person households were more likely to test positive for COVID than in two people households – there is no evidence of differences for larger households.  
  • Individuals working in health care have a higher percentage of testing positive for anti-bodies, suggesting previous infection, than those not working in a health care setting.  
  • From nose and throat swabs over the last 8 weeks, there is no evidence to shows likelihood of infection between age groups nor any evidence of infection preference between gender. 

• Birmingham is to be the first to pilot a ‘drop and collect’ COVID test scheme, as the reported number of cases in Birmingham rises to 60%. The test will be a self-test at home package which will be delivered and collected for people struggling to get to the testing sites.  
• Research at Bristol Hospital find that 3 in 4 patients diagnosed with COVID are still suffering symptoms months later. The symptoms include breathlessness, excessive fatigue and muscle aches.  
• Track and trace firms missed 46% of COVID contacts in England’s worst hit areas. The outsourced project missed a large portion of contacts in five of the worst hit areas of Oldham, Leicester, Blackburn with Darwin, Bradford and Manchester.  

Economy  

• Analysis by the ONS into retail sales shows that in total July sales are higher than pre-lockdown. Since its lowest, in April, sales have increased by 3.6% on a monthly basis. However, breaking down the sectors, analysis shows that fuel and non sale foods are below levels of pre-lockdown with clothes sales recovering the worst (still 25.7% lower than pre-lockdown).  

• One-tenth of businesses are facing a ‘moderate’ risk of insolvency, the ONS report. In the latest Business Impact of Coronavirus survey (27th July – 9th August) 10% of businesses that responded described their risk of insolvency as moderate, with 1% responding as ‘severe’.  
• Families will be stripped of eligibility for welfare benefits if they receive a pay-out under the Governments COVID 19 compensation scheme. The scheme is aimed at families of frontline workers that have died from coronavirus. The eligibility will be void due to the £60,000 entitlement from the scheme voiding capital limits for benefits such as universal credit, housing benefit and pension credit.  
• Citizens Advice reports that an estimated 6 million UK adults have fallen behind on at least one household bill, with mobile phone or broadband bills being at the top, with water, energy, council tax and rent bills following consecutively.  
• The ESRC have announced a targeted research institutes that will explore the key to resolving the UKs productivity to boost wage growth and living standards. The ‘Productivity Institute’, alongside a dedicated research programme, will be funded by £37m from the ESRC to advance knowledge and inform significant decision made by policy makers and businesses.  
• A study shows that the North South divide could be made a lot worse by COVID’s impact on the economy, with big sectors such as retail and manufacturing having major job losses.  

Climate impacts 

• The UK’s centre of excellence for local carbon and fuel cell technologies Cenex, have produced a report that recommends local authorities should embrace e-scooters rental schemes. Cenex claim that e-scooters have the potential to reduce car trips and, in doing so, cut congestion and emissions, especially in congested city centres. 
• Transport for Greater Manchester have revealed that their bus patronage is recovering a lot quicker than rail. Bob Morris, TfGM’s chief operating officer said the bus network was carrying about 40 per cent of pre-Covid patronage, Metrolink  35-40 per cent, and the rail network about 20 per cent.