Fife Council's chief executive has admitted it will take time for their workers and services to adjust to a “new norm” as the impact of COVID appears to subside.

Steve Grimmond said the local authority has faced huge challenges in terms of finances, staff absence and disruption during the pandemic and there is still "significant pressure" on services.

With COVID restrictions easing and the trajectory of case numbers apparently going down, he confirmed that work to get thousands of employees back into offices via flexible working arrangements is continuing apace as the council aims to return to some semblance of normality. 

“Like many organisations we’re still managing response and recovery from the pandemic,” Mr Grimmond said.

“In terms of the general position, all services are now operating but we are experiencing significant pressure across a number of service areas and that’s a combination of beginning to tackle the backlog of work that has accumulated through the pandemic and demand growing as a consequence of the pandemic.

“There’s been high levels of welfare support, crisis grants and COVID isolation support as well as particular pressure on health and social care.

“We’re also still experiencing high COVID absence levels – these kind of peaked in January and have been largely plateauing, although we’re now slowly seeing a decrease in these absence levels which, while they’ve not resulted in any service failure, are requiring continued prioritisation of services to ensure sustainability in the short term.

“We’re also in the process of the planned adoption of flexible work styles and there is a significant cohort of office-based staff who are now moving from home working to blended home and office working.

“That will take place over the next two to three months while still maintaining social distancing and the base measures that are required in an office environment.

“That’s going to take a bit of time to establish that new norm through the spring and into the summer.”

Ahead of the Scottish Government's revised strategic framework on Covid, Mr Grimmond had said: “The framework will hopefully further articulate an approach to living and working with COVID and that will help us as an organisation to identify any further adjustments that we need to make and further normalise work and service provision.

“There is a sense we’re beginning to emerge from the acute phase of the pandemic and re-establish our services on a more sustainable footing going forward.”

Fife Council’s budget for 2022/23 is due to be set tomorrow (Thursday) and is likely to highlight measures to mitigate the impact of COVID across services.