Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, CT has been closely following government guidance to manage the risk to our colleagues, passengers and customers. We are also working to the guidelines published by the British Standards Institute 'Safe working during the COVID-19 pandemic’.
Our stores and warehouses closed to the public on 23rd March at the start of the first lockdown period, but we continued to provide emergency housing packs to furnish empty properties and get people off the streets. Our passenger services also supported the most vulnerable, ensuring that patients were able to get to their dialysis treatment, children of key-workers could get to school, and distributed much needed shopping and emergency food packs to the most vulnerable.
During this time we have put in a range of enhanced health and safety measures to ensure our colleagues feel safe in the workplace, our minibus passengers feel safe when they travel with us and customers visiting our furniture stores and warehouses feel safe.
I would just like to say a big thank you to your team who have worked tirelessly over the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure people in the North-East have access to much needed furniture. I have personally dealt with the team at Newcastle and they have been fantastic. Once again thank you to your team at the Newcastle branch. Director of local company
In May 2020, the government announced that it aimed to loosen some of the lockdown restrictions and put in a plan for recovery, which would involve businesses and services re-opening over a phased period, but only if key measures were in place to keep people safe. The government instructed workplaces to follow its “COVID-19 Secure” guidelines on how to work safely. It gives practical considerations of how this can be applied in the workplace to ensure the risk of infection is as low as possible, while allowing as many people as possible to resume their livelihoods.
The guidance requires employers (if they have not already done so) to carry out an assessment of the risks posed by COVID-19 in the workplace as soon as possible. CT had already produced a Covid-19 risk assessment back in March, before lockdown and had gone through a lot of this thinking as we put this into practice in the workplace where we continued to provide essential services. However, we have followed the government's guidance and used it to identify any further improvements needed.
In consultation with our staff and volunteers across CT, we have carried out a risk assessment 'Working Safely during Covid-19 across Community Transport; Safer working principles and risk assessment 12 May 2020'. We regularly review and update our risk assessments, and most recently have done this to follow the national restrictions put in place by Government from 5th November 2020. Version 4 of this risk assessment can be found here.
We have also completed the government's notice 'Staying Covid-19 secure in 2020' to confirm that we have complied with their guidance on managing the risk of Covid-19. We have published this notice here.
Updated 2nd November 2020
CT will monitor and follow the government's Covid alert levels and adapt what we do in line with this. The system involves a scale of one to five which reflects the degree of threat to the country from Coronavirus. Quarantine and social-distancing measures will be relaxed or tightened depending on where the UK is on the scale. Changes may be needed regionally or locally as infection levels vary.
We aim to help to keep everyone safe, we will go above and beyond the basic requirements to ensure the safety of our colleagues, passengers and customers at all times.
CT has also put in place a working environment assessment and plan for each work site/service to set out the social distancing measures needed.
Please see below for further information about what we are doing across CT Passenger and CT Furniture
CT's response to staying safe during the pandemic Read more
See what we're doing at CT Furniture to keep staff and customers safe Read more