It has been over two months since the Covid-19 lockdown was put in place by the Government and we appreciate that this has had an impact on the wellbeing of a number of you especially those who do not readily have access to open spaces. Therefore we are going to trial an initiative, from 1 June, to allow, in a social distancing manner, members of staff who believe it would benefit their wellbeing to visit the familiar place of the Museum and have a stroll around the site.
Because of the continuing social distancing rules, we will be operating it on the following basis:-
Strictly by appointment only between 9am and 1pm.
Members of staff only (sorry no friends or family)
Only two individuals on site at any one time
Anyone showing the signs of any of the symptoms of covid-19 will not be allowed on site.
There will be no facilities (eg toilets) will be available on site.
We ask that staff only travel the Museum if it is safe for you to do so and we politely request that you do not post any pictures or comments on social media about visiting the Museum to avoid any potential confusion for the general public about the Museum remaining closed.
To book a visit and stroll around the Museum, please call Kev/John on the duty manager number, 07788 666161, between 9am and 1pm. Please be patient, as they continue to manage the site and may not be able to answer your call immediately. Leave them a message and they will call you back.
Thank you for coming together yesterday and for your hugely supportive approach in these challenging times for us all and the country. Since we met we have been working hard to answer your questions – please find our initial ‘frequently asked questions’ towards the end of this post. We will update these with any new questions and answers as they come in and will contact you when there is new content to read.
Those of us still on site have been keeping busy and yesterday we were pleased to be able to share 20 bags of food with Brother Charles from Good Shepherd Ministry (pictured with Andrew below).
In the coming weeks we want to ensure we’re keeping you all updated; not only with any news regarding how and when we will reopen but also how different members of the team are working in new ways to keep Museum activity going. We understand that not all these updates will be relevant for all recipients but we would prefer to over communicate and be as transparent as we can with all our teams.
Do keep in touch with your teams and email [email protected] with questions or suggestions for these communications. And remember to keep checking here on the intranet for updates.
General questions
Why have we
decided to close?
In response to
the recent government guidelines, we have taken the very difficult decision to
close the Museum for a six-week period to ensure the safety of our staff, visitors,
and local community. This will run from Wednesday 18th March until
Friday 1st May and will be under continuous review.
The current
guidance from Public Health England advises against non-essential contact and
travel.
For these
reasons, the Museum’s leadership team felt that closing to the public was the
right thing to do so that we can play our part in helping to stop the spread of
Covid-19 and support the efforts of the NHS.
Will Forging
Ahead be affected?
Yes, although
the development is largely externally funded, there inevitably will be a delay
in construction and a possible change in the scope of the project. It is too early to comment on the change in
timings and overall plan for the development, but we will update colleagues,
funders and stakeholders in due course.
Construction will be paused until further notice.
What about
security for the site during shutdown?
We will take
every practical step to keep the site as secure as possible during shutdown. We are in conversations with key staff and
our security provider to work on a solution.
Pay
Am I going to be paid by the Museum
during the temporary closure?
Given
our situation as a charity with a relatively small amount of reserves, we are
only able to confirm that contracted (salaried/hourly) will be paid in March
and April. We will honour the payment for casual shifts until
Tuesday 31 March, unfortunately after this date all rota shifts will be
cancelled.
Will I get paid winter or
Summer Hours?
Given
the situation we will be deferring summer shifts until we have an appreciation
of when we can deliver a 7 day programme. This clearly is not the case at
present. Payment for April will therefore continue to be in accordance with winter
shift patterns.
I have an annualised hours
contract, what will I be paid?
Employees who have an annualised hours
contract will be paid for any shifts they have been rostered/performed up to 31
March 2020. For April, they will be paid either rostered winter shifts or 1/12th
of the remainder of their annualised hours, whichever is the greater.
Annual Leave
What happens if I have pre-booked annual
leave during the Museum’s temporary closure?
Any annual
leave that has been pre-booked between 18th March 2020 and 30th
April 2020 will remain and will be deducted from your annual leave entitlement
as normal. The only exception to this is if are you are required by your line
manager to undertake work, when you would have otherwise been on annual leave
(subject to Government advice).
What happens about the Bank Holidays
that fall during the period in which the Museum is temporarily closed?
The Good Friday
and Easter Monday Bank Holidays will be considered as annual leave (in the same
way as Christmas & Boxing days) for all employees, therefore these days
will be deducted from your 2020/2021 annual leave allocation as per your
working pattern. This is the case for all contracted (salaried & hourly
paid) employees, regardless of whether you would have worked the Bank Holidays
or not. The annual leave for Bank Holidays will be paid at your normal rate of
pay and will not be enhanced.
What happens if I have bought or sold
annual leave under the Museum’s Buying & Selling Annual Leave Scheme?
If your request
to buy/sell annual leave has been approved, this will be processed as planned.
You will have received a letter regarding the change to your monthly pay and
this will take effect from March payroll.
I have requested to carry over annual
leave from my 2019/2020 annual leave entitlement, will this be approved?
People &
Culture will continue to collate all requests to carry over annual leave. As of
yet, no requests to carry over annual leave have been formally approved. All
requests will be reviewed at a later date and those employees who have
submitted a request will be communicated with accordingly.
Sickness Absence
What do I need to do if I am sick during
the Museum’s temporary closure?
Whilst the
Museum is temporarily closed you still remain an employee of the Museum,
therefore you still have a responsibility to keep us informed of any sickness
absence during the 6 week period whether it is related to Coronavirus or
otherwise. Please inform your line
manager of any sickness by calling them
and following this up with an email.
Casual Workers
I am a casual worker, will I still get
paid for any holiday I have accrued in my March pay?
Any outstanding
holiday payments for casual workers will be paid in the April pay period.
I am a casual worker, what
financial support is available?
The Government
is releasing initiatives to support people who may suffer financial hardship as
a result of the coronavirus. Please visit the gov.uk website to find out about
the support available to you.
I am casual worker and I may need a
reference for other work, how I can I get this during the closed period?
Please email
[email protected] and your line manager, they will be able to respond to
references immediately. We will try to respond to requests on the same day, but
the very latest within 24 hours.
Where can I access support and advice?
We understand
that the temporary Museum closure and the Coronavirus is a very real concern
for all colleagues. We suggest that colleagues take this time to explore
external supports available to them. Our Employee Assistance Programme
and Reward Gateway are good starting points.
Communication/Support/Access
How will the Museum communicate with us
during the temporary closure?
The Museum’s
Leadership Team will keep staff updated as the situation progresses. In the
first instance, please keep an eye on the intranet where important updates and
announcements will be made as appropriate.
The intranet
can be accessed externally via: intranet.bclm.com. Please email [email protected] for the password.
Your line
manager will also keep you updated via email or Planday.
Where possible,
staff that can continue to work from home are asked to keep in touch with their
colleagues via phone, email, or Microsoft Teams. Your line manager will provide
further guidance on any necessary changes to your work.
Who do I contact if I have a question or
concern?
The Museum will
remain open for colleagues who wish to come in to discuss the situation, until
Friday 20 March, 5pm. Your line managers will continue to be contactable both
by email and telephone.
You can also
email any enquiries you might have to [email protected].
How do I access my payslip?
The Museum
operates an online (e-payslip) system called My Epay Window. You can access
this by visiting https://www.myepaywindow.com/ entering your username and
password. If you cannot remember your login details you can request to reset
this information by clicking ‘forgot password?’ or ‘forgot username?’ Anyone
who has not activated their account will have recently been sent an invitation
from My Epay Window which will have been sent to the email address held on
file.
It is important
that you access your payslips during the closed period to receive your P60 (End
of Year Tax certificate).
What is the Employee Assistant Programme
and how do I access it?
The Employee
Assistant Programme is a confidential 24/7, 365 days a year service. Accredited
counsellors and experienced information specialists offer support and
signposting across a range of personal legal, medical, health and wellbeing
issues, as well as a telephone counselling service.
Support can be accessed via the
telephone helpline and there is also on online portal available, where you can
access further information. To access the helpline, please call 0800 015
7287 (quoting Black Country Living Museum), or visit www.colleaguesupport.co.uk and
use 72160 as your username and password.
What is the Reward Gateway and how can I access it?
You can access
this via https://wellness.bclm.com.
You will need your payroll number
if you are accessing for the first time. The site is only open to contracted
staff. It provides practical tools to support /assist with financial planning,
Health & Wellbeing including lots of practical videos on staying fit and
recipes for healthy eating, which may be useful given the social distancing
restrictions.
To improve efficiency and ensure accuracy for payroll
purposes, both the new starter and leaver process have been updated.
A flowchart has been created for the new starter and the
leaver process for managers to follow, which will help guide you through the
process step by step. The guidance for managers can be found in the ‘documents’
tab above under ‘forms>for managers’.
Most notably, the new starter and leaver forms have been revised to help capture the necessary information that the People & Culture team need, and to remove any redundant fields. If you have any previous versions of these forms please remove them from your files and only use the most up to date version which is now saved on the intranet in the ‘documents’ tab above under ‘forms>for managers’.
If you need any further guidance, please contact a member of the People & Culture Team ([email protected]).
Black Country Living
Museum is looking for memories from the 1960s of Langer’s Army and Navy Stores,
Stourbridge as part of its ambitious new development project BCLM: Forging
Ahead. The shop will be recreated and set in 1963 as part of the new 1940s to
1960s town providing the opportunity for visitors to learn about the impact of
World War II in the Black Country, the experiences of prisoners of war and the
buying and selling of military surplus.
Langer’s Army and Navy
Stores was opened at 55 Enville Street in 1953 by Herbert Langer, a former
German prisoner of war who decided to return to the Black Country after the
war. The shop had distinctive signage featuring a soldier, sailor and airman,
as well as large outdoor displays of goods that would take hours for Mr Langer
to put up and take down.
A huge amount of
military surplus became available in the years following World War II and the
Korean War, which caused a boom in the military surplus trade. There were large
numbers of uniforms available, which retailers such as Langer’s could buy in
bulk at auction to sell on to customers seeking affordable but good quality
clothing, often for workwear. Langer’s also sold items such as work gloves for
workers in local factories alongside household items such as buckets, baths and
brooms.
Herbert Langer was born in
1925 in Berlin, Germany. He trained as a chef during the 1940s and was
conscripted into the German army towards the end of the war. He was shot in the
left knee in battle and was captured and imprisoned initially in Texas, USA
before being transferred by boat to a POW camp on Bromley Lane, Wordsley. Whilst
imprisoned, Herbert became the camp chef and was, like many prisoners, involved
in an informal trade in military equipment and clothing.
The Bromley Lane camp
was an open camp, occupied first by Italian then German prisoners. Inmates were
able to go out and work for one shilling a week. Whilst many of his fellow
prisoners worked at local glassworks or brickworks, Herbert took on a job
caring for the grounds of Wordsley Rectory. He was later allowed to live in an
outbuilding there, in the care of Reverend R. H. Fowler.
At the end of the war,
Herbert was repatriated to Germany but he missed the Black Country so much that
he returned after two years. He became a naturalised British citizen in
1954. In 1949 Mr Langer was deployed to
work in Billy Evan’s Hardware Store, Cradley Heath. In 1952, Billy Evans opened
another store at 55 Enville Street selling hardware, workwear and haberdashery
yet died six months after the shop had opened. Langer purchased the shop in
1953 from Mr Evans’ widow and renamed it Langer’s Army and Navy Stores. He met
his wife Annie in the late 1950s, they married in December 1970 and had their
son, Steven, in 1971.
The store traded for
around 60 years, eventually expanding into the neighbouring terrace, through to
63 Enville Street. Herbert Langer died in 2004, aged 79. The shop building has
now been demolished, replaced by retirement homes. The business has moved to
Comberton Hill Kidderminster where Steven Langer, Herbert’s son, continues to
trade
To help us in our recreation, we would
love to talk to anyone with memories of Langer’s. Do you remember the shop? Did
you buy military surplus or workwear there? Do you remember Herbert Langer?
Please get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] or call 0121 557 9643.
Please be advised that the collection dates and times for post will be different over the Christmas period. Post will be collected as follows:
Tuesday 24th December 2019 any time between 11am and 2pm Friday 27th December 2019 as normal Tuesday 31st December 2019 any time between 11am and 2pm
If you have post that urgently needs to be sent on the 24thor 31st December please ensure it is by the franking machine no later than 10.30am.
In addition, Royal Mail have advised that our post collection time will change permanently in the new year. From 2nd January 2020, please can you ensure that all post is by the franking machine by no later than 3pm. If you have a significant number of letters or parcels to be sent via post please provide notice in advance to Ben Careless and ensure that all items are by the franking machine as soon as possible to allow sufficient time for the items to be franked.
Huw Davies, Project Manager for Forging Ahead, gives us a brief update on where we are with the project including the tendering process and building works.
Black Country Living Museum is looking for memories from the
1940s to the 1950s of the Civic Restaurant that once stood on the corner of
Fisher Street and Birmingham Street in Dudley from 1948 until the 1980s. The
Museum plans to recreate the restaurant as part of its ambitious new
development project BCLM: Forging Ahead.
The recreated restaurant will offer visitors to the Museum a
chance to taste post-war life including National Bread and steamed jam puddings
plus hearty British dinners highlighting the shortages and challenges of eating
well in post war Britain.
Purpose built in 1948 the Civic Restaurant in Dudley was part
of a government led initiative to change popular wartime British restaurants
into civic restaurants. These aimed to provide affordable and nutritious food without
diners needing to use their precious personal rations and was particularly
important in the Black Country as many companies were too small to run canteens
for their workers.
Prior to this, most British Restaurants had been located in
makeshift venues like church halls, town halls and school buildings. Dudley’s
were in church halls at St John’s Kate’s Hill, King Street Methodist, and St
Christopher’s, on the Wren’s Nest estate. But a handful of councils looked at
Civic Restaurants as an opportunity to build brand new, modern and efficient
restaurants – Dudley was one of this pioneering group.
The Civic Restaurant, built by the bus station to a modern
pre-cast concrete design, was designed for mass dining, serving midday dinners,
coffees, teas and evening meals for to up to 200 people at a time. The
restaurant featured an open plan kitchen, a mural designed by local students
from Dudley Technical College, coffee room and a terrace. In later years it was
also hired out for private functions, dances and wedding receptions.
Dudley’s Central Civic Restaurant
was a great success to begin with, but as more prosperous times came to the
Black Country, diners began to look elsewhere for less basic cuisine, and the
restaurant began to struggle. Despite a revamp in 1954 as the Ednam Restaurant,
with new menus, jukeboxes, and carpets, by 1956 it had become unprofitable, and
closed later that year. The building was then used for several different
council purposes following its closure, most notable as the home of the Black
Country Museum Development Office from 1975-1984. The building was eventually
demolished to make way for Dudley’s new bus station with many fixtures and
fittings sold at public auction.
Do you have memories of dining or attending a function in
the restaurant in the 1940s to 1950s? Did you or anyone in your family eat,
join in a celebration or work in the Civic restaurant? Can you remember the
food, the decoration or even the mural?
We are looking for staff to lend support during 1940s weekend. Please use the below form to state where you would like to lend support.
If you are having trouble accessing the form, please email Ricki ([email protected]) or Ben ([email protected]) with the areas you’d be interested in supporting and which days you are available. Thank you!
