LAST week it was announced that Ealing Council will be granting exemptions to NHS staff travelling through LTNs to administer the coronavirus vaccine to housebound residents.

Although this has been welcomed by all sides on the LTN debate, the situation is not that clear cut.

Anti-LTN group, One Ealing, have released a statement exclusively to Nub News, arguing that the Council only granted these exemptions, after it was pressured to do so by local residents.

The statement read: "On this occasion, the Council has bowed to pressure and by allowing a narrow, temporary exemption, it has clearly done the bare minimum it can get away with."

One Ealing argue that without their campaign to raise awareness of this issue, the Council would have taken longer to grant these exemptions or may not have done so at all.

"As soon as we became aware that the LTNs were preventing nurses from administering the vaccines to people's homes, we worked with Alice Samuel to highlight the issues to the Council and the media", the statement added.

Alice Samuel is a nurse who in some cases had to abandon her car on the side of the road, due to the LTN bollards, in order to walk up to patients' houses and administer the flu jab.

She joined One Ealing in campaigning for these exemptions and shared her relief when the Council made its announcement.

She said: "I'm so happy we are working hard and it's just nice to know we won't be penalised for actually doing our jobs."

Ealing Council has challenged One Ealing's position, arguing that it acted in due process, quickly, and not out of reaction to any pressure.

A Council spokesperson told Nub News: "The council is committed to helping critical workers such as NHS staff, carers and the emergency services travel in the borough throughout the pandemic.

"We work closely with the NHS and once the vaccine rollout was announced, we started working on granting exemptions for those administering it.

"We've acted really quickly and followed due process, as soon as we found out there was a need for it, we put the agreements in place, this isn't a reaction to pressure from One Ealing or anyone else for that matter."

The council spokesperson added: "The NHS staff administering home visit vaccinations who are required to enter LTN sites in the borough should email [email protected] entering 'Key Worker' in the subject heading.

"They should provide their vehicle registrations in the body of the email to ensure they are registered as exempt from receiving penalty charge notices (PCNs) when entering LTN sites."