COVID-19 update

UPDATE FROM MARCH 2020

We are having regular conversations and are responding to updated government advice on a daily basis.

In response to government restrictions, we have closed all of our offices across Hull and the East Yorkshire and relocated our usual office-based teams to home-based working. Out of necessity, our Huddersfield office remains open on a restricted access basis. We will review this decision in line with changing guidance and continue to keep our valued customers up-to-date.

Currently, we are continuing to offer our people support and advice on managing the prevention and spread of the virus, while ensuring that we position ourselves to maintain ‘business as usual’ for our customers. The location of some of our team may have changed but our commitment to providing you with an unrivalled service has not.

Following the issue of the Site Operating Procedures by the Construction Leadership Council, we have undertaken a thorough review and risk assessment of the current and planned future activities on each of our construction sites against those procedures.

Unfortunately, and with the safety of our workforce and supply chain first and foremost in our minds, this has resulted in us implementing a phased suspension of work on the majority of our sites.

Our site-based teams in facilities management and front-of-house remain operational on customer sites. Again, this is a situation we are reviewing on a daily – if not hourly – basis. We are making these decisions alongside our customers and clients to minimise disruption to their service and support them as best as we can during this unprecedented period. But our people remain our priority and as long as they remain operational we will continue to enforce the strictest standards in hygiene, site safety and adherence to social distancing.

All of our retail outlets remain operational. As our retail teams fall into the government category of key workers we will keep all of these outlets open until we are advised otherwise. There may be some small changes to service and Subway has instructed the temporary closure of all stores until further notice, so we are complying with this request. We have a number of measures in place in our stores to protect our team, including encouraging good hygiene regimes and supplying hand sanitiser, 2m distances marked on the floor to be observed by customers, request to use contactless payment methods wherever possible and regular team updates on social distancing measures.

We have developed business contingency plans to protect our projects, investments and most importantly our customers and staff. These plans continue to evolve as we receive new information and updates.

Please see below some guidance on adjustment being made to our ways of working across the Group:

Operational impact

We will continue to update you on our day to day operations as and when things change.

Currently, our Head offices in Hull, and our Albion Mills office in the East Riding are all closed. We are following government advice for our teams to work from home, with selected staff in higher-risk categories already having being based at home for the last few weeks. Access to our premises will be restricted to our security team who will remain vigilant in monitoring the safety of our premises, and have also kindly offered to support us in forwarding mail so that we can avoid any further disruption to business. Out of necessity, our Huddersfield office remains open on a restricted access basis.

All 13 of our retail outlets remain operational. As our retail teams fall into the government category of key workers we will keep all of these outlets open until we are advised otherwise. We are well equipped to work remotely and our team has full access to our networks and systems.

Unfortunately, and with the safety of our workforce and supply chain first and foremost in our minds, this has resulted in us implementing a phased suspension of work on the majority of our sites.

Where it is safe and reasonable for us to remain on operational sites, we’d like to maintain ‘business as usual’ wherever possible but must be respectful of developments where this is not practical.

Meetings and travel

We are currently following government guidance on unnecessary travel and instructing our teams to rearrange all meetings in favour of phone calls or online conferencing to allow them to work from home and follow government advice.

As part of this consideration, we will continue to stress to our teams the importance of considering whether any work-related travel is necessary for continuity of business operations before going ahead with it.

Where our teams need to continue to travel to their place of work this is still deemed, by government guidance, as necessary travel.

We hope that this detail will provide some reassurance that we are taking every reasonable action to continue to provide the highest levels of service to our customers, while protecting our people.

While the COVID-19 outbreak continues to develop we will endeavour to keep you informed on any changes to our policies, ways of working and actions taken to minimise disruption to works and to protect the health and wellbeing of our team and customers.

If you have any concerns about any aspect of our service or your dealings with us or require any additional support at this time please do not hesitate to get in touch.