Council takes proactive approach amid ongoing pandemic

Wednesday, 1 September 2021

Penrith City Council is taking a proactive approach as the state’s lockdown continues to impact our City.

With 12 suburbs in our LGA identified as areas of concern due to the present number of COVID-19 cases, Council has been speaking with local businesses and community leaders to identify core needs and challenges.

Confusion has grown as only half of our community is subjected to stricter lockdown conditions; the division has never been greater. A coordinated response is what’s needed, and Council is leading the way.

From surveying our community to gather an evidence-based perspective for decision making, we are connecting with our residents, multicultural leaders, and businesses to understand, interpret, share, and react. There’s never been a more important time to pull together our resources and community services to respond.

Three separate surveys were conducted over the past month to reveal the pressing issues being faced by business owners, community organisations, and residents. One survey, a pulse survey of our residents, the first of its kind, was conducted to enable Council to clarify our communities' stressors and enablers, to share this evidence-based feedback with state and federal agencies.

The survey results also help Council to play a coordination role to support at a local level, where we can continue to monitor and measure how our community is coping during this extremely difficult time. We are sharing this with local community support networks to reduce the complexity for people who are in need of support.

Penrith Mayor Karen McKeown OAM said Council has been proactive across the community since the pandemic started.

“As we are unable to hold face-to-face meetings due to restrictions, Council acted early to stay engaged and find alternative ways to have our ear to the ground, giving our community the chance to voice their concerns, and for us to then share these evidence-based insights with state and federal agencies and service providers,’ Cr McKeown said.

“By approaching this situation from multiple angles, we can not only help our state and federal counterparts, but we can also assist the coordination of our local response through the multiple on the ground agencies.

“In keeping the conversation open with our community and other levels of government, we can identify real-time opportunities to improve, respond and rapidly deliver crucial services across our LGA, and particularly to our most vulnerable residents and businesses.

“Council remains committed and is working hard to get our City through this tough time.”

A further survey will be conducted in October to identify whether there have been improvements and if the same stressors remain or new challenges are present in the community.

For the most up-to-date information on restrictions and services currently available to the community, visit penrith.city/covid19.

Photo caption: Penrith Mayor Karen McKeown OAM and Council staff met with our community’s multicultural leaders via Zoom on Thursday 26 August.

Information contained within this news release was correct as at Wednesday, 1 September 2021.