You may remember an update on our Museum’s response to the ‘step 4’ Covid-19 roadmap changes that took place across England in mid-July.
At the time, we as an organisation felt it important to take a more gradual approach to easing back to our normal ways of operating to ensure the continued safety and comfort of all our staff and visitors. To that end, we maintained important and effective safety measures including bubbling of team members and separated rest areas, reduced and timed slotted capacity to the attraction and other key areas (such as the cinema and school), one way routes through buildings and staff requirement of face masks in public areas.
There has now been a good opportunity to understand how our visitors have responded to this latest point in the Covid-19 roadmap, and their attitudes and behaviours towards the measures we ourselves have retained.
With this in mind and, once again, ensuring a measured focus on the overall safety of both staff and visitors, we will be making some minor amendments to the way we operate from Monday 16th August. These are:
- To return Rolfe Street to a two-way visitor flow, with all guests exiting via the gift shop
- A gradual return to an eat-in offer at the Tube Works Café, with a small number of tables
- A move back to full visitor capacity in our cinema and school room
- Removal of social distancing arrows on our main museum roads
- A gradual increase in daily visitor capacity to the museum
However, for the time being, and at least until the end of our summer holiday period, we will be continuing with the following precautions:
- Maintaining the current staff bubbling and rest areas
- Retaining the staff use of face masks in all public areas (and encouraging visitors to do so)
- Keeping all existing safety screens in place (i.e. at till points and in historic buildings)
- Continuing with one-way routes through historic buildings and down alleyways (re-painting messages where needed)
- Keeping the current capacity limits in meeting rooms
The Museum could not have delivered so many safe and enjoyable visits so far this summer without everyone’s dedication and commitment to maintaining these additional measures, and we should all be very proud of the way we have worked together as a team to make this summer happen.
Please do discuss further with your line manager should you have any queries on these changes.
Hopefully, the remainder of the summer period shall be as successful as it has so far, and thank you for all your hard work.
Vaccination Survey & New Isolation Guidelines
Thank you to all colleagues who have kindly completed the Vaccine Survey. Over 94% of colleagues are, or will be, double-vaccinated by the end of September.
The Government guidelines on isolation are expected to change from Monday 16 August 2021. Those who are double –jabbed or under 18 and unvaccinated, will not need to self-isolate if they come into contact with a positive case. Instead you will be encouraged to have a PCR test to confirm your covid status. If you test positive for covid, you will need to isolate for 10 days.
Given the easing of restrictions it is now more important than ever that colleagues undertake twice weekly lateral flow tests. Test kits continue to be available from People & Culture.
The Covid flow chart for managers has been updated and added to HR/Wellbeing /Covid on the intranet.
