LAST week, I asked you to consider how we can prepare and help our community with this unprecedented challenge of Coronavirus. The response since then has been brilliant, including West Dorset businesses who have offered help to manufacture emergency ventilators. In Broadmayne, West Knighton, Beaminster, Bishops Caundle and Sherborne – to name just a few so far – volunteer groups have sprung into action to prepare to help the most vulnerable in our rural areas with shopping and delivering food; dog-walking, collecting prescriptions, or even simply talking. But we need more offers of help. Lots more… Please visit my website for more information and to offer your help where you can. I’ll be writing to all Parish and Town Councils this week as well, but please sign up to help if you can on my website.

Whilst the press publicises supermarkets having empty shelves, it is not showing how well stocked our local independent shops are. This is not the time to desert our high streets and shopkeepers; most often it is their shelves that are full of groceries and toiletries and we ought to be supporting them. It’s wonderful that local businesses are now organising home deliveries and I’m delighted to see shops and restaurants in Sherborne come together to deliver fresh food, meals and more to the homes of local residents who would otherwise face difficulty.

I said last week that we need to be prepared. We have another week, or maybe two, before we see a considerable increase in the cases here. As ever, washing our hands thoroughly with good old-fashioned soap and hot water (for at least 20 seconds) is the very best thing we can do. Today I’m expecting emergency legislation to come to the House of Commons to enable the Government to do what it needs to do.

WEST DORSET MP CHRIS LODER