Local councillor ‘does not see any point’ of people being told what is going on with the pandemic at a local level

A councillor has told a Communications Officer at the council that he “didn’t see the point of these heat maps that you are sending out”, as custom localised information on the pandemic is created and circulated to local communities by the local authority.

Public Health Wales started providing heat maps to show exactly where Covid-19 is circulating in different parts of the country last month.

It allows people to access figures which have been broken down beyond county level and illustrates how individual communities compare on a rolling seven day average, and gives trackable figures for those who want them. It appears Wrexham Council is packaging some data and providing it to local councillors and circulating it at a very local level.

You can view such graphical representations here on the dashboard under “cases by MSOA” tab. The data visualisation could be slow, however can be speeded up if you selected a local authority area on the drop down option to the right of the map.

Council Communications Officer Chris Henshaw told councillors such data and maps had proved useful for targeting areas witnessing a spike in cases to encourage people to follow social distancing measures.

Speaking at a meeting held on Tuesday, he said: “Public Health Wales now publish sub-local data which shows coronavirus levels in different parts of the county borough.

“We use that to create bespoke content for communities that are experiencing particularly high levels at the moment.”

“Last week, Chirk was showing high levels of coronavirus so we provided content to local members, the community council and other stakeholders on the ground to post on local community Facebook pages.”

“It’s basically the same messages around social distancing, but they talk about Chirk specifically so hopefully there’s a bit more of a tribal trigger in terms of attracting the attention of residents in those communities.”

One councillor was highly critical of the data, branding it ‘one of the worst things’.

Cefn councillor Derek Wright said: “Personally, I don’t see the point of these heat maps that you are sending out. Cefn in the first one or the Cefn area, which I think includes from Trevor, Garth and Plas Madoc were in the best three results in the first one that was sent out.”

“Then the next one will come out, it was the second worst one to come out. As I see it, that heat map is a shot in time, it’s just what is happening at that minute when the records are taken.”

“So people could see it, and think oh we are low in our area and can relax now.”

“To me it is a county wide issue or a country wide issue, never mind bringing it down into villages.”

“I just don’t see any point in it at all. All it could do is make people that have got good results relax and not take precautions that they should be.”

“I think it’s one of the worst things that the Welsh Government and the Council have ever produced is this heat map as far as I’m concerned.”

After a short period of silence Chair of the meeting Cllr Malcom King invited any comments on the points raised by Cllr Wright over the council giving local populations more detailed data on the pandemic. No other councillor commented and the next item for debate was quickly discussed.