oday (March 23) Bath & North East Somerset Council joins the nation to mark 12 months since the country went into its first lockdown. Thoughts are with those families in Bath & North East Somerset who have lost a loved one to Covid-19 and we remember all those who have died.

A national minute's silence is being held at midday and people are being encouraged to take part in an evening doorstep vigil, in a day of reflection to mark the anniversary of the UK's first Covid lockdown.

And later this week the council is launching its Shining A Light 2020/21 Awards to celebrate individuals, teams and organisations that have made exceptional contribution during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Councillor Dine Romero, council Leader, said: "It is hard to comprehend the enormous challenges our families, our communities and our own council family have all had to face in the last year. First and foremost our thoughts are with the families of the 281 of our residents who have sadly lost their lives to Covid.

"As many of us look back to the events of the past year I would like to pay a deep, personal and heartfelt tribute, on behalf of all councillors, to our NHS colleagues, our health care workers, the thousands of volunteers, carers, teachers, the police and the council's own staff who have responded to the enormous challenges brought about by the pandemic. We also recognise the immense hardship our local and independent businesses have had and are still going through.

"We are also marking the first anniversary of the start of the Community Wellbeing Hub which was set up by the council, Virgincare and 3SG in response to the pandemic. A year on the hub can been seen as one of the positives to come out of the experience – not only for the amazing work that has been done to support the community but also the way it has shown how partners can work together. We thank them all."

Over the past year the Community Wellbeing Hub, which is based in Peasedown St John, has:

Received more than 12,000 calls

Delivered 3,079 food shopping tasks

Provided 149 other forms of support

Engaged 2,136 volunteers

Delivered 646 emergency food parcels supporting 828 individuals

Throughout the year B&NES staff have maintained essential frontline services from waste and cleansing to parks and registrars. The Public Health Team continues to provide outbreak support to care homes, schools and businesses. Council teams have distributed thousands of pieces of PPE, and where needed have been redeployed from their usual place of work to support colleagues working in alternative settings.

The council has effectively distributed millions of government support to businesses forced to close during lockdowns and has worked with the police on enforcement. It also moved its decision-making online and has used webinars to support and inform community engagement.

Dr Bruce Laurence, B&NES director of Public Health, said: "While we have seen our Covid-related statistics rise and fall through the past year, two things are undeniable. The first is that B&NES has had a relatively mild pandemic by overall England standards, being well towards the lower end of both case rates and deaths. But the second is that our world and our lives have still been hugely affected in the last year, on a scale that we could hardly even have imagined, except in the context of something cataclysmic like a major war.

"In terms of this general disruption the local impact has been very significant, although different in nature to many other localities, as the income of the area's businesses, and the council, are both heavily dependent on visitors and retail trade, and those vulnerabilities have been severely exposed. Here, as everywhere, we will be living with the consequences of this pandemic and the measures taken to try to control it, for years and decades to come.

"We are now finally, and thanks largely to the extraordinary efforts of the world's vaccine scientists and technologists, and our own health professionals, at a point where we may be able to move out from the major restrictions of the past year to something rather closer to a normal way of life; at least one where Covid is not the dominating factor. But this new Coronavirus is still with us, and we will have to co-exist with it, effectively forever. Therefore, we must have in place long-term plans and systems that can ensure that we maintain the upper hand in the struggle between human and virus."

Councillor Rob Appleyard, cabinet member Adult Health, added: "While recognising the hundreds of volunteers supporting our vaccination professionals we must as a community still be careful until we have higher levels of vaccinations. It is as important now as it has always been to follow the current guidelines. Together we will get to a better place for everyone and I hope people will join the minute's silence and doorstep vigil in quiet reflection of the past year."