Council spending on Infection Control Service set to double

Rochdale Council is to more than double the amount it spends on infection prevention and control.

Senior council officials have moved to urgently ‘extend and bolster’ the service after a report warned there was a ‘significant risk’ to ‘coverage and resilience’ during the current ‘Covid-19 emergency’.

Assistant director for commissioning Tracey Harrison said staff had been ‘working above and beyond’ throughout the pandemic and the authority ran the risk of ‘service burnout’ if extra resources were not deployed.

She added that prompt action was required to ensure it could continue to provide ‘effective infection prevention and control advice and guidance’ in the community.

The service is responsible for making sure settings such as care homes and schools follow the correct procedures to stop coronavirus – and other infectious diseases – from being spread.

The council currently pays the Northern Care Alliance £130,000 per year for the service, but this will rise to £268,000 when the contract is renewed next April.

It will also pay an extra £80,000 this financial year to upgrade the service as soon as possible.

The money will be used to bring in one extra full-time nurse, pay for a part-time nurse to go full time and significantly increase the level of administrative support.

The service is responsible for making sure settings such as care homes and schools follow the correct procedures to stop coronavirus – and other infectious diseases – from being spread.

Councillor Sara Rowbotham, cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said the council had been left chronically understaffed for a crisis on the scale of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It was such a difficult and mammoth task to make sure those places were really clear about infection control processes,” she said.

“It’s one of those services that just got whittled down and whittled down, when someone left they were not replaced, it’s one of those situations.

“We realised with Covid we had to do something else to make sure there was a robust team there. It’s an awful lot, we have all learned now about hand-washing, cleaning surfaces, all that kind of thing – about making sure we are on top of it and are ready just in case the virus flares up again at another time.”

The council secured the Norton Grange hotel for use as a ‘halfway house’ for people who were fit enough to be discharged from hospital during the pandemic, but not well enough to go home.

Councillor Rowbotham says that this was a case in point in terms of the difficulties facing the local authority.

“We had one infection person to assess the whole building, we realised it was a logistical nightmare, even though we didn’t use it as much as we thought we would,” she said.

Schools’ risk assessments are another area where the input of an infection control specialist is vital.

Councillor Rowbotham added: “It’s okay for us to say ‘this is what we need you to do’, but at the end of the day someone has to go and say ‘yes, this is on point’ – and some of them were not. It needed someone from that service to support schools further.”

Ms Harrison’s report says the ‘significantly increased’ pressure on the Infection Control Service caused by coronavirus is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. 

It adds that additional funding required to boost staffing levels is accounted for and planned for within the council’s Covid Outbreak Plan Grant.

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporter