The Leader of Milton Keynes Council, Cllr Peter Marland, has said that Milton Keynes must 'pull together' to get through the second coronavirus lockdown.
England will enter a month-long lockdown from Thursday when people will only be allowed to leave their homes for specific reasons, such as education, work or food shopping.
The new measures will last until 2nd December.
Speaking about the announcement, Cllr Marland said: "Throughout the pandemic the people of Milton Keynes have made an enormous number of sacrifices and generally we have not seen the high number of cases as elsewhere, however even this was beginning to change in recent weeks."
"The national rise in cases has shown that only a national lockdown can stop the situation becoming disastrous. As a place we go into the lockdown in a better position than most, and it does look like relaxation of measures will depend on local infection rates. So the quickest way out of lockdown is to ensure we simply follow the rules."
"However, the government must now get their house in order too so all of our sacrifices are not wasted. They need to stop making empty promises and get the basics right. Access to testing. Quicker results. Ensure a functioning tracing system and proper funding system for self isolation. Lockdown will only be worthwhile if they use the time to fix the issues, not waste it on garbage moonshots and empty promises."
"Over the next few days Milton Keynes Council will work hard to understand what the impact on services will be and we will again step up as required. It is a few days before the new restrictions come into force."
"People should not panic, please don’t bulk buy and don’t spend the next few days mixing in groups that will increase the infection rate in the next couple of weeks and mean we take longer to come out of lockdown. The new lockdown is difficult and I believe it was entirely avoidable, however we must now all pull together again for each other."
READ MORE: Milton Keynes MP says national lockdown is 'now the right thing to do' to 'protect the NHS'
