So, here we are in the Plymouth City Council leader's office,
otherwise known as my kitchen.
I can prove that by showing you the cooker, dishwasher, lunch, computer, headset ...
This is Tudor Evans the leader of Plymouth City Council.
We need to do more to support our local fishing industry
because the the prices are on the floor right now.
Give me an update on the latest ... small businesses in Plymouth.
'Tudor Evans is now joining.'
Tell me what it's like running the city from your kitchen.
It is quite tricky to be honest with you.
78% of the council staff are now working from home.
And how many people is that roughly?
2080.
Wow.
By this evening I've done 38 meetings.
Keir, I was just wondering whether or not you will make sure that the governor understand
that we're not some stopgap ...
You are seeing now the local government at its best
but after 10 years of cuts.
You know, local governments not got a lot of ...
I might have but everybody is stretched to the limit
and now we've got this crisis ...
It's been a hell of a long day today.
It's tough, it is different.
You're looking concerned,
but not grim.
So that's good.
We met Tudor Evans in real life back in 2016.
We're making it happen ...
A regeneration plan, all new.
And it is ambition ...
No, this is about the ocean, this is about outreach, this is about going abroad ...
Back then, his energy and optimism in the face of big challenges
seemed to embody the values of the city.
... a global reach and confidence.
We are going back to our roots with this Anywhere but Westminster
and making a film about a single place.
Plymouth.
Over the years, we've come up with a kind of model
for what Anywhere but Westminster is all about.
First thing is to go somewhere most of the media ignores.
This is a city with a fascinating past, present and, arguably, future.
Plymouth's got a population of around a quarter of a million people.
Hit the high street and start speaking to total strangers.
Excuse me, we work for the Guardian, the newspaper ...
I'm really not interested in that. — OK.
Persevere ...
Let's go further up the street.
It will take one minute.
Eventually the beauty of face-to-face encounters starts at to reveal itself.
How do you each think Plymouth is doing?
I get the feeling that's on the up.
You know, Plymouth is up but there is a homeless population ...
I'm out begging to get money to feed myself and this kind lady had just
bought me a sandwich and a drink.
So you're not friends? You've just met?
She just came over to me and said, do you want some ...
We've been friends for five minutes.
OK.
Plymouth made a real impression on us.
I like it here, personally.
We've decided to come back the only way we can.
What can you see? So you've got me in one side, yes?
And your web browser on the other?
You're on the side of the window and I've got my Facebook page here.
Are you going to give this a go then, yeah?
Tell the viewers what we are about to try.
Vox-popping in lockdown.
Twitter is like the high street, right?
I don't think Twitter is like the high street, I think Twitter is like some mad pub.
Everything Plymouth UK, a group for anything Plymouth.
Tilly's beauty Rooms.
That will do.
... of life on the lockdown ...
Registered beekeeper ... — That's good!
Plymouth's Zero Waste shop ...
I've got one here who love sunsets.
Anybody, fine.
I'll talk to anybody!
My computer's really slow!
Is it rubbish?
Come on, Kevin ...
I've had a reply!
Have you? — I've had a, 'yes, I guess.'
Who's that from?
She's the woman who posts sunsets.
Right, send her the link!
If this works even once ...
Jackie's here!
Hi! — Hi.
Wow! — Yeah, wow!
You caught me on the hop of it.
No, you caught us on the hop. We are amazed this has worked!
Oh right, OK.
What does the city feel like?
It's a bit eerie, it's a little bit like, if we were taken
over by zombies.
You're walking in the street that you know really well but you just weary all the time.
I don't like it.
I'm on furlough at the moment.
Are you?
I work in a theater and my whole life is entertainment and looking after bands
and acts and I'm absolutely going berserk.
So this is my way of coping.
Because I've been able to see every sunset, every sunrise for the last month
and today how would you say you were?
I'm OK today, I'm having a good day today.
Because I had a good sunset last night.
Just caught it and it just went in a flash ...
It was like, there, gone.
One area of Plymouth's economy that's in dire strait as a result of Covid-19
is the fishing industry.
It's difficult, you know, we're a good 50% down on their turnover for the prices
and we're a while off from getting any money in from government.
Now we need to make it work, we've got bills going out,
Hey!
People in the city have started Call4Fish,
a website that connects fish merchants with customers all over the country.
I've just ordered some more fish ...
We need some footage of you cooking the fish.
You said that that was happening! — It's online! It's online, man!
Now, I've got this monkfish ...
You get the clams and the crab sauce.
Tudor is publicising it
with his own online cooking spot.
Cuttlefish ink pasta.
We think the cuttlefish probably was caught in Plymouth
and went to Italy where they made it into the pasta
and now we brought it back home.
... that's gorgeous.
By the way, it's time to remember,
Call4Fish.
This is getting very exciting.
Am I right in saying that the fish trade in Plymouth is having a difficult time at the moment?
Fish prices are generally on the floor.
It's a huge income loss.
This is kind of ...
What this is doing is helping the merchants to get at least some of the money
they would have got from restaurants and supermarket chains ...
You get it deliver to your door ...
Well, let's get back on it with these virtual vox-pops.
There we go.
Wow, here we go!
Can you turn your phone so we can see it horizontal wise?
Instead of walking down the street, we've just been rummaging thought Facebook all day
trying to find interesting Plymouthians.
I feel so interesting right now.
It's just been really busy since then, it's growing and growing.
We just this week started offering veg boxes from a local ...
I'm hoping that with the long term change we've definitely got a lot of new costumers
that have never shopped with us before.
... in a gas service company, it's dead.
I've set myself up as a limited company for the improvement of locally adapted bees ...
A bit of a sideline.
For my own personal mental health.
I can put myself at the back of this shed and just forget about everything.
Have the bees benefited from the changing environment?
Yes, the fact that everyone is sort of locked down, it's less people on the roads ...
There's less people out cutting the grass ... benefit from the wildflowers.
What do you make of the way the government's handling all this?
I think they've done really the best that any government would do,
whether it was a Conservative government or a Labour government.
Did you vote for them?
If I voted for Conservative? — Yeah.
No.
You're involved with the theatre in Plymouth, that's correct, isn't it?
Yeah, a young company are doing a coronavirus time capsule.
'You must stay home.' — Yes!
To sort of looking back and showing my kids this is what we did in lockdown ...
To see how well we all sort of coped with it.
This is a very important think they're doing at the moment,
I just think it opens up a whole new world
and maybe that's how people get to release themselves, you know, through the Arts.
I'm really struggling to fit one in and I feel absolutely terrible about it.
So many amazing characters have sent stuff to us ...
A guy who cleans ovens and sings ... He's doing facebook lives now.
A pro basketball player is now delivering food for the vulnerable ...
Restaurants going around all the key workers in the city and providing them free meals ...
But I think we got to go to Becky the nurse now.
I'm off to work now and leaving my family behind in lockdown.
I'm going to say goodbye to the kids but I know I'm just going to just want to crawl in there
And go back to sleep with them but unfortunately ...
There's work to be done.
Becky is a nurse at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth.
I'll see you later, I'm going to work, OK?
Bye, mum. — Bye, love you.
A good day of work.
Like nurses around the country, she volunteered to work with Covid19 patients
as soon as the crisis hit.
Can you just sort of tell us what you do?
I am specialised in chronic migraine ...
So I do postops and epidurals in people's heads all day long.
So I moved to a completely unfamiliar area.
Wow, OK.
And then so now, since I guess ... what?
Five, six weeks ago, what work are you doing now?
So my face-to-face clinics had to be stopped because the lockdown
so I volunteered to go to the red zone and I basically just visited the first Covid positive
ward manager said, where do you want me?
She said, well we're really struggling with communicating with family members,
so I've been able to get the iPads down here and facilitate Zoom
and conversation which is completely ...
I mean, who would imagine you would be able to talk to your husband
via Zoom but actually it has worked really well,
we've had such amazing feedback from families.
We've had that moment a few weeks ago
with one of our patients who you helped enormously,
with him reconnecting with his family before he passed away.
His family has written something for you.
OK?
Would you be able to forward our deepest thanks and gratitude to all the staff
who cared for Ian in his last few hours of life,
in particular Becky and Charlotte who arranged for the Zoom conference yesterday afternoon
which has left us with such precious memories.
They worked so patiently in helping us to make the connection when we were struggling
with the technology, they epitomise the superb staff who looked after Ian
and cared for him so diligently. You are all heroes
and deserved the total respect of the nation.
And they also emailed me and they said
after all of this they'd like to meet us and say thank you in person.
Alright?
You did a really good job. I want you to keep that.
This has gone through all the heads at the hospital, the chief ex and that you did that.
Anything coming back from your Facebook?
No, I haven't got any messages back.
I mean, a good day of vox-popping is when we get seven or eight.
And we are almost there.
We often stick our heads in hairdressers and beauty salons, we do.
We've done good interviews ...
You see your clients sometimes as more than a friend,
they are your friends and your family, so you know all about their lives, they know about you.
So yeah, it is really hard because it is a very social job.
For me, my job is contact with people so I just can't work.
I'm seeing videos of people putting their hands through people's doors ...
Just to be clear, there are videos of people paying someone a visit
and what, are they putting their hands through the letterbox?
And doing their nails?
Yeah, but that's not for me.
Will your business survive this, do you think?
I don't know really.
I literally do not know what the future holds.
I've never thought about the sort of contact element, you know, the very things
that were supposed to be the savior of the high streets and God
knows we've we've talked a lot about high streets over the years ...
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I haven't processed that barbers, hairdressers, nail places, beauty salons, right?
Charity shops ...
They're all hit hardest ... meanwhile what's doing well?
Warehouses, Amazon ...
Jeff Bezos who's just getting richer and richer and richer.
Hello.
Right, so we are just on our way to some of our houses ...
The government has said that anyone who is homeless needs shelter during lockdown.
Meaning that temporary accommodation is more in demand than ever.
So where we would normally have a cyclical motion of
people moving in and out of our temporary accommodation every three months,
that isn't happening which means the rooms are getting
blocked up which means we are having to take on new properties.
So, at the moment, people can't move out of temporary accommodation?
Most people can't move out of temporary accommodation?
Yeah, most people yeah, say it's a 95 to 99%.
One of Alex's clients is Nigel who because of the surge in demand for housing,
is in his second accommodation in two months.
Tell me, where you were at where you were living six weeks ago
before the lockdown happened and how your life has changed.
Oh God.
It's been a whirlwind.
I was a carer for somebody and they asked me to leave
and so I sofa surfed for a while and you'd think wait a minute I just want to slow down,
and just rebalance myself and everything.
So you were sofa surfing, you went to get help,
you're put in temporary accommodation with
24-hour staff and then because of the lockdown you had to move again then into
where you are now?
Yeah.
Do you have a sense of where you're going to live as and when the lockdown is lifted?
No because this is only temporary anyway this was only meant to be for three months.
At the moment this is 'home'.
I don't really plan any futures or anything like that,
I'm more of a go with the flow sort of guy.
You know that somewhere along the line somebody's going to go
and pull the ladder from underneath you.
The lockdown has demanded that as a society
we treat homeless people better, right?
In the sense that homeless people have actually been given shelter, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
You think it will be odd going back to a world where we say, well, sorry these rules
have now been withdrawn and you got to be homeless again.
Well, I hope it doesn't as long as it's documented
and as long as enough people know that this is what is possible in a crisis
and why can it not continue.
I don't want to go back to the world that we had six weeks ago.
Me neither.
Darth Vader.
Oh, I am really stressed. Do you need me on camera?
Yes, please.
Oh God.
Sorry I am so stressed.
This is huge.
An authority like mine that's going to have spend 60 million quid ...
Sorry, 30 million quid and lost income of about the same.
I mean, that's all money.
That's not available to deploy in the usual place ...
The government know that has the to cover it.
But it hasn't yet worked out.
... some support going on between left and right in the Tory Party
but I'll until that ... we still don't know where we are.
That's why I'm a bit stressed.
Today's the 28th of April that was 11 o'clock we've just observed our minute silence on
for all of our health care professionals that we've lost since the Covid outbreak started.
Do you have the sense of the future?
For you and for this condition,
and what life might be like in three or four months' time?
Well, I'm thinking years to be honest,
that's my opinion.
Going back to numbers in terms of Plymouth,
I'm really fearful about that because we have the lowest figures
in the country and now they start to relax things ...
I think will be hit massively.
I'm really worried that, you know, our spike is yet to come ...
That's how I feel about it.
This thing that you are to get explicitly or your sort of sense from
Tory governments of we're all in this together,
well it turns out to be window dressing for the complete reverse
or it doesn't last very long.
If you talk to people who run cities and counties and boroughs and all of that,
a lot of them sense this prospective it's been once again cut adrift.
The point is, for years we've looked at the ways in which communities are trying to bounce back
and look after themselves, right?
The community sprit here has been amazing.
... have been dropped off to people.
Food parcels have been dropped off,
the neighbourhood watch have been amazing.
Those coming around in outfits to keep the kids cheering ...
The whole community has just pulled together
and it has been something else.
I'm proud to live here.
The strong sense of place that people have discovered
in places like Plymouth, it needs to be backed up by government action
and powers and money.
The trumpet based piece of music you've heard throughout this episode
is Lament composed by Simon Dobson.
Tell me about the moods you were in when you wrote the piece.
I was thinking about my career
and the scene in the town and I think I definitely felt almost a sense of like,
like I was grieving.
There's loads of money coming to the city for music and art
and it felt like everything was just about to really kick off, to be honest,
and now it's not.