A ‘lessons learned’ analysis of Suffolk’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is set to get underway over the next couple of months as county leaders vow to continue taking steps to aid the county’s economic recovery.

Suffolk County Council chief executive Nicola Beach, who chairs the resilience forum’s Recovery Co-ordination Group, said that winter planning work was already well underway, while work on lessons learned from the pandemic will begin soon.

“In terms of learning lessons it will be over the next couple of months,” she told the Suffolk Public Sector Leaders gathering of council, police and health chiefs.

“The local resilience forum [LRF] have already engaged a body that is very adept at looking at the lessons, doing a piece of research, so we will be asked to input that.

“We will look across how we responded, how we are looking now, the recovery piece. There is a national piece of work the LRFs are doing, and we will certainly do our part in that, and make it specific to Suffolk as well, so that is in train.

“We did consider doing that at the earlier part of this year, but the timing has got to be right when people can just step back and reflect on what has gone on. Equally if you leave it too long memories fade and you don’t catch that qualitative and quantitative data.”

The resilience forum gathers local authorities, police, health and other public sector groups during emergency or crisis situations, with work between organisations having been ongoing in both response measures and recovery efforts since the pandemic started.

Ms Beach said that it was right for the recovery group to continue its fortnightly meetings, and said that it was feeding into the Government’s autumn and winter plan.

She added: “We are keeping a very close eye on what is coming down the track.”