The government’s announcement about the change in rules to allow only groups of six people together, either outside or inside, from this Monday onwards are a result of new COVID-19 cases going up across the country.

Ealing unfortunately is no different and our new cases for the week up to 6 September are 71, which is 20.8 per 100,000 of population.

This is the exact same figure we had about two weeks ago, when we were second highest in London we are now with this figure – the 18th in the capital.

Showing that we are not rising as much as others but that actually, right across the capital unfortunately, cases are rising steadily.

We do all need to make an extra effort to follow the rules including the new ones from Monday in order to stop a second deadly wave of the virus.

Fortunately, death rates and hospital admissions are still low, but unless we can stop the growth in new cases especially amongst young people, we will see more elderly and vulnerable people contract the virus, and more serious consequences follow.

Please wear a mask, wash your hands for 20 seconds and only meet in groups of no more than 6 after Monday, 14 September.

Get a test if you have any symptoms and I know that there have been problems getting a test sometimes but we now have a walk in test facility at Featherstone Terrace Car Park, in Southall. We are also hoping to open another similar facility in Acton very soon.

I want to give an update on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. We’ve continued during this last week our dialogue with the emergency services to ensure that they have access and that they know that we are willing to make adjustments, if requested to do so by them, in order to give them the maximum ability to get to residents’ as quickly as possible when they are needed.

Now we are also listening to residents concerns about LTNs and genuinely that is the case. I have been reading all of the emails that people have been sending and we know it is particularly challenging when they are first implemented.

I would ask people to be patient and allow them to bed in and for people to be given enough time to learn the new routes that they will have to follow to get where they need to go.

I know this is challenging, I know it is difficult but I would ask people to just give it that time in order for us to then go in to that six months of consultation.

We will be listening to people’s feedback both positive and negative, before we make any permanent decisions.

We want to be able to look at this very carefully and closely so that if there are changes that we need to make we can do.

The whole idea is that this is an experimental traffic order that we are introducing these low traffic neighbourhoods under. We are using temporary materials in order to put them in so we can take them out if we need to quickly and inexpensively.

So, please have patience and also let us know what you think.