Following the Government putting Erewash in Tier 2 restrictions, the Trust has reviewed the way our volunteers are working. Our route from Sandiacre to the Borrowash / Spondon boundary is in the Erewash Tier 2 restrictions area.

Meetings of the various groups within the Trust, and the Development and Society Committee meetings have been successfully, over the months from the beginning of lock down, by video conferencing. With a lot of work carried out on all fronts of our project and further afield.

After lockdown, back in June, we were able to restart our Gardening Working Parties, following the guideline of hand sanitizing, social distancing and facemask. On most of our Gardening Working Party sites, we have been able to ensure volunteers safety and social distancing. These have been popular, and on occasions we have had up to 12  volunteers on a site. However, given the new restriction of a maximum of 6 people meeting outside from different households, we realised that we could conform to the restrictions. With the number of volunteers wanting to attend, we would not be able maintain the 2 metre spacing required. On some of the sites, we would had the general public walking through the middle of our volunteers. We have decided, that for the next few weeks, that we would cancel all planned Gardening Working Parties. Some work will continue, where only a 2 or 3 of volunteers are on site, can maintain the requirements of social distancing and are away from the public.

The new restrictions are aimed at social gatherings of people, and the construction and building industry are continuing to work to the restrictions imposed back in June. We therefore plan to continue our work at the Canal Cottages. However, to ensure that the regular team of volunteers are safe, we have limited the number of volunteers on site to 6. They will be working in groups of 2 in their own ‘bubbles’, in different parts of the building on specific tasks. We have also reinforced the use of hand sanitizers, social distancing and facemasks to ensure that they are safe. Any volunteers who only attend ‘as and when’, have been asked not to come to the cottages and enjoy a short holiday.

As the restriction change we will review the situation on both Gardening and Cottage Working Parties. Hopefully, this current restriction will only last a couple of weeks and we can back to the ‘new’ normal.

As always, keep safe.

Regards

David Savidge

Director

Derby & Sandiacre Canal Trust