QUESTIONS have once again been raised over the Government’s rationale in applying further restrictions to Kirklees – despite infection rates in the borough remaining stable.

Kirklees Council Leader Councillor Shabir Pandor aired his concerns in a zoom conference with Sir Keir Starmer when the Labour leader was in Wakefield.

Leaders of other Labour-led local authorities – Tim Swift for Calderdale and Susan Hinchcliffe for Bradford – also took part.

Together they outlined how their areas were coping with the re-introduction of lockdown elements as well as dealing with localised spikes and a decrease in capacity in care homes.

Coun Pandor said it remained unclear why Kirklees had been hit with new restrictions when figures had been going down “week by week”.

And he praised hard-pressed staff who had been deployed to assist in high risk areas even before the new lockdown measures had been announced.

He said the council was testing people via mobile testing units in areas that had “higher than average” infection rates.

Asked by Sir Keir if official data on affected areas was getting better, Coun Pandor said Kirklees was “playing catch-up”.

He added: “Finding that information out by tweet or social media isn’t really the right thing to do. We have a lot on our plate but we need to have better communication.

“A lot of things have been put in place now but we need to keep the goodwill and the confidence of our communities. The message is very complicated.

“Different people are getting different messages from different departments and it’s really confusing our communities.”

He said there was a will to ensure the poorest areas in the borough were not penalised by restrictions and that businesses and employers were “supported and incentivised”.

But he stressed: “[People] are not going to come out and say, ‘I’m positive’. They’ll panic. It doesn’t do anybody any good. It’s a perverse incentive.”

That sentiment was echoed by Sir Keir, who described it as “a major issue”.

He added: “People would rather not know.

“If people feel that they can’t cope financially if they’ve got to self-isolate, then human nature being what it is they’ll try to avoid being tested and/or not necessarily self-isolate when they should, which is a real problem within the system.”

From a Labour Party perspective Sir Keir said: “The approach we’ve taken on local restrictions is to support the decision the Government has taken, but the communication has been very, very poor.

“The communication in these cases where announcements were made at nine o’clock or ten o’clock at night, very often on social media, which changed the rules for people starting at midnight, caused huge chaos and uncertainty.

“Lots of local people and communities just didn’t know what the rules are. That is no way to handle a situation like this.

“Nobody can pretend that there won’t be local outbreaks. It’s very difficult to get this right and therefore there will be. The question is: are the right steps in place to prepare for this?

“One of the concerns of the local leaders that I was talking to is, in effect, they are having to learn and handle this in real time and there should have been a plan in action.”