Preparations underway to support opening the city’s high streets safely

St Peters Quarter BID have been working with Derby City Council and partners as part of the Derby Economic Recovery Taskforce to plan for the safe reopening of the city, as lock down measures are eased from 15th June.

A number of adaptations to the city’s streets have or will take place in the coming days including additional signage, cleansing and temporary measures to manage the highways and public spaces. These have all been introduced to promote the necessary social distancing and hygiene measures that need to be in place to enable the city’s high street to be as safe as possible for residents, visitors and traders.

The BID has put together an essential checklist for businesses as part of the latest newsletter. Those businesses who have requested a COVID-19 Business Recovery Starter Pack will receive a printed copy of the latest newsletter; however you can also view this online here. Businesses can also support the safe re-opening of the city centre by undertaking the following:

• Effectively managing any queues external to your premises. This includes ensuring that queues run alongside your own building curtilage and advising customers to return when the maximum queue length is exceeded.
• Talking to neighbouring businesses to agree on where queues will form to avoid conflict
• Minimising the use of A-Boards which could make social distancing more difficult
• Consider disabled people, how they can continue to access your stores and social distancing procedures. For further advice from Derby City Council regarding this please click here. 

If you have yet to request a COVID-19 Business Recovery Starter Pack you can do so by email. A list of possible PPE and equipment suppliers, if required, can also be found here.

Businesses should be mindful that Government guidance is being continually updated and therefore measures taken locally are subject to change. Businesses should also consider the unfortunately possibility of partial or full lockdown being reintroduced at any time and factor this into their plans and risk assessments.