
In March, the UK Government had announced fairly stringent guidelines for individuals and businesses following the escalation of the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK. At that time, with safety front of mind, we closed the doors to our physical NTAR building, moving all of our training online to fulfil the requirements of our partners and trainees to continue to upskill the UK rail industry.
This course of action proved to be very successful, with little impact on our day-to-day working and training capacity and courses unchanged. However, following the relaxation of lockdown rules and the latest Government advice plus a significant focus on COVID-safe face-to-face activities, we are now in a position to re-open our facility from 1 July 2020.
To ensure the continued safety of our staff, trainees and visitors, we will carefully manage onsite presence. The majority of our people will continue to work from home and most training will continue online, but having the building available for face to face meetings and activities will be helpful. We have put in place additional cleaning regimes, will be asking all people to regularly cleanse their hands and will be maintaining appropriate social distancing in line with guidelines. Where this is not possible we will mandate the use of appropriate PPE.
I hope that you will welcome this development in our approach. There will be many challenges ahead I am sure but this will lay the foundations to move our business, and your strategic learning objectives, forward. As always, if you have any concerns regarding the impact of COVID-19 on our operations please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Thank you for your continued support.
Joanna Binstead
General Manager, NTAR