Sellafield Ltd’s Geospatial and Strategic Spatial Planning Team have used their skills to help support the most vulnerable in the community as part of Cumbria’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Richard McGrath, who heads up the team at Sellafield Ltd said:
Three colleagues worked closely with Cumbria County Council since the beginning of lockdown, to help them develop a web-based interactive ‘app’ to help triage and coordinate support to the most vulnerable in the community.
The application provides information, in a web-map, on where vulnerable people in the community live and matches this with the geographical spread of local community support groups, such as the nearest foodbanks, supermarkets, pharmacies and other services helping the most vulnerable in our communities through the lockdown.
The information is kept live and retrieves details logged in the Cumbria County Council Call Centre after people contact the county council helpline to access support.
Richard added:
This app is now used in all the local area hubs throughout Cumbria and the application has been recognised nationally as the standard to aspire to for managing this task.
Matt Pearson from Cumbria County Council said:
Sellafield Ltd’s support has been absolutely invaluable, with the team working extremely hard to map, layer and develop a system that works for our Community Hub Teams.
The mapping is allowing us to reduce the number of officers supporting the hub works across the county which at its peak was around 120 personnel.
This Cumbria wide approach will now allow for Carlisle Hub Teams to start managing cases in Barrow, because the local knowledge they need is now available to them in an accessible format.
The Sellafield team have been a pleasure to work with, especially as additional requirements have been identified and different approaches taken.
Jamie Reed, Sellafield Ltd Head of Corporate Affairs said:
Since lockdown began we’ve been assisting the community response in as many ways as we can.
Hundreds of Sellafield employees are volunteering in the community, we’ve provided £200,000 for the provision of 20,000 gowns for the NHS, we’ve made PPE available to the NHS from our own supplies and we’ve spent tens of thousands on providing hot meals for delivery across the community for those most in need.
We’re working with schools to ensure that the most disadvantaged pupils don’t fall behind in their education and much more. In Cumbria and in Warrington, we’re doing all we can to help our communities deal with the pandemic and, crucially, to prepare for the recovery.
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