With so much uncertainty across the construction sector and in all our daily lives, today we’d like to present an update on where things stand at Sheriff Construction in relation to the impact from COVID-19.
The majority of on-site work has come to a close
Prior to the coronavirus crisis, Sheriff had contracts in place with many of the leading contractors working in London and the South East of England. The majority of the sites we had teams working on have now come to a temporary close and unfortunately that means our team has had to be reduced accordingly. We hope most will be able to benefit from the self-employed scheme announced by the government at the end of March.
Health and Safety paramount at continuing sites
One of the contractors we work for still has an operational site in London and so we have a very small number of bricklayers servicing that work. Their health and safety is our number one priority. All are following strict guidelines – avoiding public transport, maintaining social distancing and following the Standard Operational Procedure issues on 24th March by the Construction Leadership Council.
Property developments
As many will know, Sheriff has, in recent years, begun working on our own development sites, primarily focusing on the redevelopment of brownfield sites. We have several of these sites in the pipeline but, under current circumstances are putting much of this work on hold. We are continuing to work on the design and planning stages and also have one local site where some essential clearance work is being carried out to ensure the site is safe and secure. Again, only 2 or 3 workers are involved in this and they have all been instructed to observe social distancing rules.
The office and back-end operations
Most of our office staff are working from home (with occasional visits to the office by selected members of staff).
This means our back-end operations are still taking place. We are keeping up to date with administration, records and accounts while doing all we can to plan for the months ahead.
We’re trying our best to support our workers in relation to getting the support they are entitled to during this pandemic. It is regrettable that we will most likely need to furlough some staff.
Sheriff had already begun planning and designing a new website before COVID-19 became an everyday part of our lives and will be continuing with this work over the coming weeks. We’ll let you know when it’s ready to launch.
Finally
To round things up, here’s a word from our Managing Director:
“The construction industry (like many others) is being severely disrupted by the coronavirus crisis. When this all began, Sheriff was heading into its 15th year in operation and in a fortunate position of being in good health as a business. While we cannot forecast what will happen next, we hope that starting out from this kind of strong position will help us all through this and enable us to spring back when the pandemic and all the safety issues that go with it make that possible. Meanwhile I wish you all stay safe and stay well.”
07.04.2020
