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Wicklow County Council improved performance while mounting covid response, noac report shows

Wicklow County Council improved its performance across a range of indicators during 2020, despite COVID-19 challenges and while providing additional innovations and services during the pandemic, according to a new report.

The NOAC Local Authority Performance Indicator Report 2020 shows Wicklow County Council made advances last year, in particular in the areas of Community and Business supports.

COVID-19 placed a considerable burden on the Council, with a reduction in revenues and strained resources. However, essential services were delivered throughout the pandemic while Wicklow County Council played a vital role in the national response to COVID-19.

Wicklow County Council established the Community Call service to provide support to more than 1795 people since March 2020.

The Council also provided a range of new supports and grants to businesses, offered resilience and wellbeing supports to the community and worked to facilitate changes to the public realm in the interests of public health and safety.

Alongside this, Wicklow County Council continued to deliver essential services throughout COVID, as the Performance Indicators Report 2020 shows:

  • Wicklow County Council added 251 units to the social housing stock in 2020
  • 88.7% of motor tax transactions were conducted online in 2020, a significant increase from 2019
  • The Local Enterprise Office approved 301.9 (per 100,000 population) trading online vouchers to support Wicklow businesses to increase their online offering. The LEO also provided mentoring to 563.8 (per 100,000 population) businesses.
  • In 2020, total road improvement and maintenance expenditure was €7,627,350 for strengthened and resealed on 156.2 km of both local and regional roads
  • There were more than 1,459,825 million visits to council websites and our social media following increased by 22.2% to 80,626 in 2020.
  • Wicklow has continued to demonstrate that it is a clean county with 80% of the County shown to be either litter-free or only slightly littered. This is a continuous level of improvement from 68% in 2018 and 76% in 2019

Cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council, Cllr Shay Cullen, welcomed the report saying: “Last year was very challenging year for all sectors in our community and Wicklow County Council played a vital role in the national response to the pandemic by supporting the most vulnerable in our communities and continued to help economic recovery in Wicklow by supporting all our local businesses.”

 Commenting on the report, Chief Executive, Frank Curran, paid tribute to the hard work and dedication of Wicklow County Council employees, stating: “Wicklow County Council continued to provide hundreds of services throughout 2020, despite the challenge and uncertainty of COVID-19 and the constraints of public health restrictions. We are continually seeking to improve services and increase efficiency and did manage to make progress in a range of areas last year. Now that we are in a more certain situation with regards to COVID, we will build on our progress, continue to innovate and deliver quality public services.”