Official leading effort says city had 2,000 fewer visitors a day after attack, but is confident bookings will recover next year

The official leading the recovery effort in Salisbury following the nerve agent attack has warned that the city will not be back to normal until next summer.

Alistair Cunningham, the chair of the recovery coordination group, said experts were currently designing plans to decontaminate areas affected in the attack on the Skripals. He added that in the immediate aftermath the city had welcomed 2,000 fewer visitors each day.

Despite many tourists being put off the cathedral city since the incident on 4 March, he said it would eventually come to be regarded as another chapter in the city’s 1,000-year history.

Cunningham rejected the notion put forward by the bishop of Salisbury, Nicholas Holtam, in his Easter sermon that the attack had been a “violation” of the city.

“My view is that this wasn’t an attack on Salisbury,” he said. “As far as we are aware it was a targeted attack against [Sergei Skripal] and I think his daughter [Yulia] was collateral damage. I don’t think Salisbury has been violated. Salisbury is a resilient city. It has a history of a thousand years. It was a very particular, nasty personal attack using a bizarre method. It will be part of the city’s history but the city is bigger than that.”

Cunningham, who is the corporate director of Wiltshire council, said the decontamination process – which will include the return to the city centre of experts in hazmat suits – would begin after the Easter holidays.

He said specialists from the defence research laboratory at Porton Down, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the military were meticulously preparing for the cleanup effort.

“They have to understand the [nerve] agent, which is not something they are familiar with. Then they have to plan each site in terms of how they approach it. What the public don’t want to see is a lot of people in hazmat suits for long periods. If we can get this executed quickly and cleanly we get a better outcome for the city,” he said.

Once the sites are judged to be clean they will be handed back to the city and regenerated. The recovery team has set the final Saturday in June 2019 – Armed Forces Day – as its end date and hopes to host the national element of that event.

“We will have got through decontamination and remediation. We’ll have had a big marketing push and will see the results in next year’s bookings. By next summer this will be behind us and the city will be in better shape than it was before this happened.”

After the attack, 40 fewer tourist coaches – carrying about 2,000 fewer visitors – were coming to Salisbury every day. Over Easter visitor numbers were down by 11%, although tourism across the UK suffered because of poor weather. “People were less sure about coming to Salisbury,” said Cunningham. “But that will change. A lot of people will come because they know what has happened and want to show support.”

Cunningham said care had been taken not to put out “bland messages of reassurance” about the health implications of the attack but to only give information based on fact.

The police identified 131 people who could have come into contact with the novichok nerve agent – mainly emergency services and health personnel. Cunningham said their physical and mental wellbeing would continue to be monitored.

He said more than 60 people had presented with health concerns after the attack. But still only four people – the Skripals, DS Nick Bailey and an unnamed police officer – had needed treatment for exposure to the agent.

“There is a degree of confidence that this was a nasty but very targeted attack. Therefore it hasn’t got wider implications,” he said. “Work will be done to decontaminate the sites involved. If there is anything there, it will be cleaned up. I’m very confident this process will end in a safe city.”