We’ve just had the very sad news that the first care worker in Ealing has passed away – somebody who worked in one of our care homes.

And I’d like to pass on my sincerest condolences to the family, work colleagues and friends of this care worker. My heart goes out to them. And, also on behalf of everyone in Ealing, I’d like to thank all of our care workers, our NHS workers and our key workers. What a fantastic job – courageous job – that they are doing.

Keeping the discipline – while getting around

The lockdown continues and we need to keep the discipline. There is fatigue. But please continue to stay at home. And if you do have to go out to make essential journeys, then try not to use your car. Walk or cycle.

We need to create more roadspace for pedestrians to walk at proper social distances and so we’ve implemented a new scheme outside Lidl in West Ealing, where we’ve widened the pavement to take up some unused roadspace to make sure that people can properly social distance.

We want to look to see if there are other areas in the borough where we could do that, so please let us know where we might be able to extend the pavement to allow proper social distancing outside busy shopping areas.

We also want to see if there is opportunity to create more temporary cycle lanes to give more space for cyclists.

We are also looking to plan to see what we need to do to lift the lockdown. And we know that when that’s going to happen that people are going to be fearful to travel on public transport because of worries about catching the virus because of the difficulty of keeping social distance on public transport.

What we don’t want people to do is all jump in their cars at that point.

We would like people, if you don’t use public transport, to walk or to cycle. And to make sure that we don’t have an increase in traffic. Please make sure that you try to stay at home, though. That’s the key message.

Ramadan and staying at home

And, I just want to thank all those who are celebrating Ramadan for staying at home to do their fasting and iftars and their prayers.

We’re grateful for those who are celebrating Ramadan this year for staying at home – and also to everyone for staying at home. It’s definitely protecting our NHS and saving lives.