Coronavirus (COVID-19)

England is now subject to National lockdown: Stay at Home restrictions.

You must stay at home. The single most important action we can all take is to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives.

You should follow this guidance immediately. The law will be updated to reflect these new rules. We will update our website to explain what this means for local people and businesses as soon as we can.

Leaving home

You must not leave, or be outside of your home except where necessary. You may leave the home to:

• shop for basic necessities, for you or a vulnerable person
• go to work, or provide voluntary or charitable services, if you cannot reasonably do so from home
• exercise with your household (or support bubble) or one other person, this should be limited to once per day, and you should not travel outside your local area.
• meet your support bubble or childcare bubble where necessary, but only if you are legally permitted to form one
• seek medical assistance or avoid injury, illness or risk of harm (including domestic abuse)
• attend education or childcare – for those eligible

Read the Government’s guidance here.

We will be reviewing updates from government as they are published and working out what they mean for council services. We’ll publish information on these pages, or you can sign up for email updates to be the first to know. For the time being, we’re encouraging people to follow the Government’s latest advice.

Following Government instructions designed to help reduce the spread of coronavirus, the council has taken a number of steps to help ensure the wellbeing of customers, staff and the wider community.

This means some of the services you usually use will be closed, or will be operating in a different way. We understand the changes to our services may be frustrating, but the Government advice is clear that we all need to do what we can to stop coronavirus from spreading, helping to save lives and protect the NHS.

We are working hard to make sure the services you rely on are available wherever possible. We are putting additional measures in place to make sure that people who are more likely to be affected by the social distancing measures get the support they need.

Working together in the pandemic

We’ve reduced how many council staff are out and about during the pandemic but some people still need to work around the city. We only send out staff when we need to. We’re careful to follow the latest national coronavirus restrictions, and our staff all follow safety rules. We’re committed to making sure that everyone who works for the city council treats all of our residents and customers politely and with respect. In return we ask that everyone respect our staff while they are doing their jobs in these challenging times.

If you need to contact us, our phone lines and customer service emails are available and we are keeping the website updated with information about affected services, and alternatives wherever we have them.

We recognise that calling a helpline is not easy for people who have difficulty in using the telephone to access support due to being autistic, having a communication difficulty or a disability, such as hearing loss. As a result we have created a text message option.

Simply text your name and a brief description of the support you need as well as whether you would like us to respond with a phone call or email – if you choose email make sure you tell us your email address.

The number to text is 07860 027785, this number is monitored during the times our phone line operates, 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, we will get back to people as soon as we can.

Please only use this number if you have difficulties making phone calls so we can use the service to support those who really need it.

• Sharing of information for the COVID-19 extremely vulnerable persons’ service
• Public health COVID-19 testing data privacy notice
• COVID-19 test and trace data privacy notice
• Portsmouth City Council – coronavirus risk assessment