The National Command and Control Structure has been established to allow information to flow up and down the structure to/from the Cabinet Office (COBRA) at teh top down to voluntary organisations, such as our village groups, at the bottom.

Oxfordshire County Council, with the aid of volunteers, is in the process of setting up a support network to allow national support to flow down to district and local community groups. To date this includes:

• The launch of Oxfordshire All In which gives details of all the local county community initiatives and help and will be accessible primarily through a map interface (external website). Their regular email bulletins can be found here or you can sign up to receive them by email.

Ongoing work includes working out how the Government support, including free food parcels, will be delivered to those most in need in Oxforshire and on the 'Extremely Vulnerable' list and who do not have a local friend, group or relative who can help (full details of this can be found here on the Government website. Our current understanding is that if you are due to receive one of these food parcels you will have already received postal notification of your 'extremely vulnerable' status as part of the 'Shield' programme. Parcels will be delivered directly by a Government agency and not through OCC, VOWHDC or one of our local support groups.  

In conjunction with OCC, the Vale is working up its own plans which will, in turn link to village support groups where appropriate to do so. To date plans include:

• The establishment of an Emergency Grant funding program. If you feel there is something that needs funding in support of our support activities, please discuss this with Simon Jenkins or Mike Oldnall in the first instance. 
• Suspending car parking charges in all council car parks oacross the South and Vale areas.

• Scaling back planning activities.  There will be no site visits for planning or building control applications over the next 3 weeks.

Further details of all Vale Coronavirus matters can be found here.