Council leader Elaine Murray has called for a “united Dumfries and Galloway effort” to make sure the region recovers properly from the pandemic.
She revealed that all major agencies will work together on the community planning partnership board to find the best solutions for moving forward.
This means all the main players, including police, health board, housing associations and business representatives will form a united front and meet regularly to help restore normality to the region.
Dr Murray has been chairing the response, recovery and renewal (RRR) council committee which was set up last year specifically to monitor and respond to the ongoing Covid situation.
But the committee, made up of 11 elected members and which meets again next Thursday, may be coming to the end of the road.
She said: “The purpose of RRR really was less about reports and more opportunities to discuss ways forward.
“I’m not sure hand on heart if it’s necessarily had great success in doing that so far.
“The important thing really is, that when it comes to the recovery side, much more will be tasked to the community planning partnership board, rather than just the council.
“The community planning partnership board has representatives from the council, health service, police, fire and rescue service, housing associations, business. It’s got all the players.
“When we come to look at how the region recovers a lot of that will be done with the partners working together rather than the council doing their bit, the NHS doing their bit and business doing their share separately
etc.
“We need to make sure it’s a united Dumfries and Galloway effort to make sure the region recovers from the pandemic.
“The RRR committee is there at the moment. It was created to respond to a very fast-moving situation at that time.
“What it’s future is we’ll have to decide because I think it may be overtaken by the work of the community planning partnership.”
Dr Murray represents the Nith ward and has been council leader for the past four and a half years.
“That’s because of historic things that have happened here, such as the problems with DG1, the problems with the trunk roads network, the strategic waste issue where we had to get out of a PFI contract.”
