Families in Hemel Hempstead are being urged not to meet up during the Easter holidays

A leading councillor has put out a plea to parents and children in Hertfordshire not to meet up over the Easter holidays.

Since the easing of lockdown measures on March 8, children have been allowed to return to their classrooms nationwide.

But the county council’s executive member for education, libraries and localism Cllr Terry Douris has stressed they should still not meet up out of school.

Pointing to the upcoming Easter holidays, he said: “... it would be very easy for people to want to communicate and meet up with friends outside the school environment, obviously.

“But really just to say, hold on and stay safe and maintain the distances and the protocols – because we will come out of this right at the end of it, but not if we get it wrong during the school holidays.”

Cllr Douris made the remarks at a meeting of the county council’s cabinet on Monday (March 22), after council leader Cllr David Williams welcomed the falling rates of Covid infection in the county.

Cllr Williams pointed to figures that suggested the current rate of infection in the county had now dropped to 31.3 per 100k population.

Cllr Tim Hutchings, the county council’s executive member for public health and prevention, acknowledged that ‘numbers’ were coming down.

And he said the numbers of people being vaccinated were ‘quite significant’.

But he warned that it was still ‘not the time to take the foot off the pedal’.

“We still have some weeks to go before we get to the end of the roadmap and I think it's important that people are cognisant of that and they follow the rules,” he said.

“We have come an awful long way and it would be a shame now to drop the ball when we are so close to being successful in really getting on top of the virus.”

Cllr Hutchings thanked those involved in the vaccination programme, the public health team and the public of Hertfordshire for their efforts.

And he said: “Let’s keep going for another couple of months and I am sure we will crack this.”

At the meeting, council leader Cllr Williams also catalogued additional sources of Covid funding that had been confirmed.

He said the county council was now expecting the council to receive a portion of £594m allocated to local government nationally for ‘Discharge to Assess’, to cover the first few months of the financial year.

He also reported that care home providers in the county would benefit from a portion of the £341m that was to be made available nationally for infection control and testing.

And he said a further £400m had been allocated to local government nationally through the ‘contain outbreak management funding’.