South Gloucestershire Council has stockpiled enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff, care homes and other settings to last 452 days, it has been revealed.

The authority is braced for a possible second wave and has released more details of its local outbreak management plan, which all councils were required to publish in June.

It says every school is ready for the return of pupils in September.

Mustafa Salih, head of finance in the children, adults & health department (CAH), told councillors that the local authority had so far supplied more than one million PPE items to care and education providers since lockdown began.

“From the beginning we said as a council that for any provider that had difficulty with securing its own supplies of PPE we would do our best to fill that gap,” he said.

“The range of organisations we have supplied include care homes, home care providers, direct payments recipients, supported living facilities, informal carers, funeral directors, our own staff, early years settings and schools.”

Mr Salih told health scrutiny committee members on Wednesday (Jul 29) that during the early days of the pandemic the council supplied 3,000 high-grade surgical masks, called Type II R, a day.

“That steadily declined during June and July and it’s now down to about 300 per day,” he said.

“That is obviously because organisations have been able to secure their own supplies a lot easier than in those initial days.

“We actually track the rate at which we are providing PPE on a daily basis and we set up triggers to warn us if our supplies are getting low so that we can go back into the market to procure any stock.

“At the moment we’ve got a good supply of PPE, so we’re in a much better place than we were initially to cope with demand if there are any spikes in demand.

“We’re currently holding a stock of 250,000 Type II R masks and that’s enough to supply providers at the current utilisation rate for 452 days, but obviously we want to be prepared for any spikes that come as well.

“The market has improved so it’s a lot easier to procure PPE, and the cost has reduced since those early days.

“We have good communications with providers to make sure they’re aware we are available as providers as a last resort and that seems to have worked well.”

Jon Shaw, head of CAH’s commissiong, partnerships and performance, said care homes were required to tell the authority if they were within 72 hours of running out of a PPE item.

South Gloucestershire director of public health Sara Blackmore said the council’s local outbreak management plan built on existing processes of managing other infectious diseases, such as meningitis and flu, as well as from what they had learned during Covid-19.

She said one focus would be on high-risk communities and workplaces, following coronavirus hotspots elsewhere, and tourist areas over the summer.

“Testing and contact tracing is a key element of the plan,” Ms Blackmore said.

“We now have an opportunity to deploy testing should we need to in South Gloucestershire as and when we see outbreaks.

“We could do that by working with the Department of Health and Social Care to deploy mobile testing units and also working with the CCG to think about how we can deploy more agile testing teams out to locations.

“I’ve made that clear from South Gloucestershire given our rural population.

“Clearly that needs to be a priority for us.

“Now is the time to ensure we have processes in place ready for what is coming our way.”

Cllr Shirley Holloway said: “I am particularly worried about children returning to school in September.

“I can see terrific problems in corridors where it’s quite impossible to have the right amount of distancing.

“I don’t think children are wearing masks and unless the distancing reduces even to a metre it will be almost impossible to accommodate the children in schools.”

Ms Blackmore said: “There is clear guidance around how schools should operate.

“The risk is so low to children.

“That guidance includes things like children not requiring PPE or face coverings unless they’re 11 and above, which is outside of school settings.

“It is an area we are really going to be focused on from September.”

CAH director Chris Sivers said: “Every single school has a risk assessment and in June each was looked at by our health and safety team to ensure it adequately considered the reopening and how they were going to manage those risks.

“We now have all our schools with an adequate health and safety risk assessment which they are updating on the basis of new guidance.

“We have had very positive feedback from all our schools.”