A HUGE star is set to be placed outside Leigh Town Hall to celebrate the contribution of local NHS workers and other frontline staff.

Council bosses announced the decision during a town hall meeting this week.

Cllr David Molyneux, Wigan Council leader, said: "When the time is right and circumstances allow, I intend that we will place two stars as a big thank you that all these people have done during this vital time in 2020 and going forward into 2021.

“I’m pleased to announce tonight this will be the first part of our recognition of thanks to all the people who’ve gone that extra mile in what we’ve had to do during this crisis.”

Deputy leader Keith Cunliffe, who is responsible for the adult social care portfolio at the town hall, also thanked health and care staff for their efforts.

The Labour councillor, who worked as a nurse in the NHS for 40 years, said he knows the ‘tremendous trauma’ of seeing patients die and understands the physical and mental exhaustion from the job can have a ‘tremendous’ impact.

Speaking at the council meeting, he said: “I think we can all agree as we reach the end of 2020 that it’s been an unprecedented year in all of our lifetimes.

“For nine months we’ve been in a series of restrictions and lockdowns and everything else.

“And so speaking from my health and care portfolio, I think it’s important that I personally, and we as a council, express our thanks to all those people working in health and care over the last nine months.

“We thank them all the time for everything they do, but in the last nine months, they’ve been working under extreme pressure and stress.

“The doctors and nurses at the hospital have been under severe stress for a long, long period of time and even now in the second wave it’s only just starting to relieve a little as we reduce the number of transmissions of infection.

“And possibly we face another third wave perhaps in January or February.

“So for the work they’ve been doing – I think there are thousands of people in this borough who work in health and care – and it’s important that we register the council’s thanks for those people for what they’ve been doing.

“And it’s not just the nurses and doctors at the hospital. All those other people who’ve been going in – porters, domestic and all those other ancillary staff.

“But not just the hospital. In the first wave, the care homes were particularly badly affected. We’ve seen over 200 deaths of residents of our care homes.

“And these people who work in care homes in the borough, who work in home care, who work in the supported living service were going into work.

“When you think back to April and May when we had a position where nearly 1,000 people a day were dying with Covid-19, then these people were going in and putting themselves and their families at risk to care for our most vulnerable people that we have in our community.”

He added: “When I think of all those care workers in our care homes, many of them on low pay, doing that on a regular basis, this town owes a great debt of gratitude to those carers in health and care in this borough.

“So I’d like to formally register the council’s thanks and appreciation for everything that they do.”

Another star will be placed in Believe Square in Wigan by the authority.