A northern NSW council’s grass-roots response to the Covid-19 pandemic has earned it a national award for resilient local governments.

 Bellingen Shire Council’s Pandemic Response Group was awarded the 2022 Resilient Australia Local Government Award at a ceremony in Hobart on Tuesday night.

Bellingen was among 23 councils considered for the award, with projects judged on benefit to the community, effectiveness, collaboration, community engagement, sustainability and scope for the project to be replicated in other communities.

Outgoing general manager Liz Jeremy said the group was a fantastic example of community-led resilience and how local government can support and empower communities in times of emergency.

Organic response

Ms Jeremy says the pandemic group emerged organically in response to initiatives that were starting to happen in the community.

“A series of things began to happen in response to covid, so the council took on a support and enabling role in helping to facilitate some of those community actions,” she told Government News.

What resulted was the formation to the response group, which included chambers of commerce, local pharmacists, local GPs, a network of community champions and Council.

The role of the group was to deliver initiatives, actions and information to support a local response to the pandemic.

“Council was a part of the group and we provided in-kind support, and sometimes cash, for particular initiatives by community and medical response groups,” Ms Jeremy said.

Council also facilitated weekly virtual meetings for the group over twelve months, and put together videos and message boards to communicate with locals and share information.

The group even saw local doctors come together to establish and run a covid testing clinic for 18 months without any government funding.

Embedding resilience

While the covid group came together in response to the pandemic,  Ms Jeremy said Council had already started embedding resilience into its core business and rolling out a program of work after the 2019 bushfires.

“We started out with a deliberative panel to talk to the community about what they thought was important to build resilience and preparedness and response – basically everything that sits around the challenges of emergencies,” she said.

“So we were able to bring the work we’d already done into that space where we were working on covid.”

Lasting legacy

Ms Jeremy says all the virtual infrastructure that sits behind the response group is still there, which means it can quickly be stood up again if needed.

It’s also left a lasting legacy, she says.

“The neighbourhood care network is still in place and going from strength to strength in terms of supporting the community.

 “We’ve also built a resilience team, with clear objectives around supporting local and working in partnership.”

The Resilient Australia Awards are sponsored by the Australian Government in partnership with the states and territories and managed by the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR).