Coronavirus (COVID-19)

This page gives you the latest information about services affected by the coronavirus outbreak, and the support available to residents and businesses in Portsmouth.

Your actions over the coming weeks and days can and will have an impact on the people and places we love. There are steps we can all take to Protect Portsmouth:

• Stay at home as much as you can
• Maintain 2 metres social distancing if you need to leave home, cover your face when needed and keep washing your hands
• Get tested if you show symptoms – go to nhs.uk/coronavirus or call 119
• Self-isolate when you need to – only leave home to get a test
• If you see something unsafe, tell us

New national restrictions are now in effect.

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.

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