TWO national Covid lockdowns forced major changes in the way businesses and services operate.

Surgeries, charities and long-standing businesses in Royal Wootton Bassett spoke at an area board meeting about how they managed to adapt in the pandemic.

Practice manager at Tinkers Lane Surgery Rob Noel is among those who won’t be looking back. “We functioned differently in the pandemic, we changed a lot of things radically which in ordinary times would have taken years to set up,” Rob said.

“We started doing video and phone call consultations in July which has been a success. It keeps control over the amount of footfall we have in the surgery and it protects patients and staff.

“It’s increased our resilience hugely. Prior to the pandemic, we had one laptop, we now have 10. For flu vaccinations, we have had a drive-thru and walk-ins which we will look to do in the future again. These changes have had a good impact environmentally and financially. We’ve also received positive feedback from the community on all these changes.”

The surgery was granted planning permission in the summer to take on an extra 3,000 patients after creating four consulting rooms on the first floor.

Manager of the Royal Wootton Bassett Library Alison Killeen said: “We had to step up our game online, we offered more e-books, e-magazines, audio books and online activities.

“Once we were allowed to reopen, but in a limited way, we were able to start doing a click and collect service. Moving forward we’re going to be helping people with our services and mental health support. We are looking to have people come back into the library at the start of December.”

Deb Skilton is children’s service leader at children’s charity The Rise Trust.

Over the first lockdown, it supported 205 families in Bassett and Cricklade. “The centre closed for four weeks at the start of the first lockdown but we still continued to support families,” Deb said.

“We had to tweak our delivery methods and had to try different ways of giving them our support. We communicated with families over Whatsapp, Facebook or met outside at a distance, our use of social media has really developed.

“We’ve had to adapt our child development and social sessions, parenting courses and domestic abuse courses. They’re all done virtually and people are attending them. It was so important that these families had this access, which is something we will look to do in the future because the feedback we got was really assuring, but it would be a blended approach of in person and virtually. It forced us to think creatively and it’s made a big difference.”