Letter to businesses from Dr Rupert Suckling - December 2021

Dear Business Owner,

As you will have no doubt seen the Government has announced that the country must now move to Plan B in a bid to stop the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

This means that:

• The guidance around wearing face coverings has been extended to include most indoor spaces, such as theatres, cinemas, and shops (this does not currently include hospitality settings).
• People are being urged to work from home if they can do so.
• Fully vaccinated people in England who have had contact with someone with Covid-19 should take a rapid lateral flow test every day for seven days.
• Covid passes will be mandatory for large, unseated events, this can include negative Lateral Flow Test results and NHS passes proving vaccine status.

In a bid to keep people across Doncaster safe and to reduce the risk in infections it is important that we all follow this new guidance and that businesses across the borough understand their responsibility to support this.

Please see a link here to the latest bulletin from our licensing team which gives more specific details and guidance for different business premises: /admin/resources/licensing-bulletin-8.pdf

For further advice on complying with the new rules please visit the Government website:

Guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-covid-19/restaurants-pubs-barsnightclubs-and-takeaway-services

Carrying out mandatory status checks: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/carrying-out-mandatory-covid-19-status-checks-at-yourvenue-or-event

If your teams can work from home, I would urge you to put in place the necessary actions to ensure that they can do so. For businesses who need to be in the workplace, I would encourage you to revisit your covid risk assessments to ensure you have appropriate measures in place and are doing all you can as an employer to keep everyone safe.

This includes looking at ventilation, one-way systems and appropriate social distancing within the workplace, reminding employees of hand hygiene and asking them not to come into work if they have symptoms of covid and to get a PCR test.

Even if you don’t have to wear face coverings in your business, I’d encourage you to consider going beyond the guidance and introduce them for staff and visitors within your business setting, particularly when people are moving around your office, factory, warehouse, or place of work. In addition, Lateral Flow Testing continues to play a really important role and we need to encourage staff to continue to get tested regularly so they don’t unwittingly spread the virus putting colleagues, family, friends, and the wider Doncaster community at risk.

Booster jabs are now being offered to all over 18s who have had both doses of the vaccination, I would urge anyone eligible to get vaccinated to help to protect themselves and their loved ones.

The Covid pandemic is not over, and we must continue to do all we can to halt its spread particularly over the winter months to help reduce the pressure on our health services.

I’d like to thank you once again for all your efforts during what I know has been an extremely challenging time for our business community. Let’s all continue to balance the risks and do what we can to control the transmission of the virus. Let’s Do it for Doncaster.