We were honoured and thrilled to receive a special visit from Sutton’s Mayor Cllr Trish Fivey and Deputy Mayor Cllr Annie Moral on Thursday 13th August in recognition of our team’s dedication to responding to the town’s plumbing emergencies during the Covid-19 lockdown period.
Whilst many of the team were on furlough, we kept a handful of engineers available to visit customers throughout lockdown, ensuring that those with critical heating and plumbing issues and the most vulnerable were prioritised and swiftly attended to. Some of our customers are elderly or were shielding, so they were often anxious about letting a tradesman into the property. Throughout the period we assured them that all government social distance guidelines would be adhered to, with engineers wearing all the required PPE and any interaction was avoided where possible.
The Mayor spent half an hour chatting to John, Carly and some of our team members in the office on the hot sunny day. She shared her experiences during the crisis and told us about the proactive response in the community to the Covid19 situation, which is now served by over 1,700 volunteers to support those in need.
We discussed the challenges presented by home-learning, as our founders Carly and John were operating the business from home, with young children to take care of and teach. Our Domestic & Commercial Engineer, Matthew Williams described the appreciation he felt when visiting customers in their homes and what measures were needed to ensure they were kept safe.
Mayor Fivey asked if we would be making any new changes to the way we work following the crisis. We needed to make some adaptions by reducing the level of paperwork and further automating our systems, which will continue over the coming months.
At the end of the visit, Mayor Fivey said “We saw first-hand how professional and effective your response has been during the lockdown. It was clear that everything you do is geared to keeping your colleagues and general public safe during the lockdown. You could feel a real sense of camaraderie between you and your staff. We want to acknowledge the invaluable work that you and your staff have done during this pandemic. It has made us all aware of how much our way of life depends on all key workers. I wish to take this opportunity to thank you all.. ”
As lockdown measures continue to be lifted, our team is now back to full operating capacity and we are doing what we do best, going to whatever lengths necessary to ensure the local community can access essential heating and plumbing services.
