Important COVID-19 information

Updated 21/07/2021

An update from Karbon

As I’m sure you’ll be aware, the 19 July marked an end to all Covid-19 legal restrictions. Despite this, the Government has advised that everyone still takes a very cautious approach. 

The health and safety of our customers and colleagues continues to be our main priority. You may have seen the high numbers of cases being reported daily and the Covid-19 rates for our region are currently the highest in England.   

Like many other organisations up and down the country, the Government’s guidelines around self-isolation are really starting to impact our colleagues and the way we deliver our services to you. Isolation rules have resulted in a significant reduction in the number of colleagues we currently have available, and this availability varies daily. This is especially the case for our ground's maintenance, repairs and heating teams. As a result, it is also becoming increasingly hard to reschedule jobs or plan ahead because colleagues can get notified to isolate at any time. 

There are also national shortages in cement, timber and plasterboard and this is causing us and others in our sector some issues, creating longer lead in times. Our suppliers are working hard to increase deliveries and working weekends to speed things up but it is having an impact. We’re also expecting future issues accessing ironmongery and hand tools due to the Covid-19 situation in India.  

These colleague and material shortages mean it may take us longer to get to you than it would pre-pandemic. I know this can be frustrating but please be assured that we are doing our best in these particularly challenging and stressful times and ask you to please be patient and bear with us. We’re here to help you and can do this much better in a calm and positive environment, please continue to be kind and respectful to our colleagues. 

We’d also appreciate your support to help us prioritise and get to those repair jobs in most urgent need. So, please consider the importance of any repair or home visit request before you contact us to book. Would you class it as essential or urgent? If not, and it can wait a little longer, we ask you to postpone booking for a short period of time, until isolation rules change and the pressure on our teams eases a little.  
 
Please don’t be offended if we also ask you to assess your repair’s urgency when you contact us to book. Working with you closely to evaluate jobs will really help us prioritise the essential activity and those customers in most critical need. I’d like to thank you in advance for your support with this. 

As always, our teams are still here to help you so please get in touch. The fastest way to book an appointment is by using the MyKarbon customer portal.     

Please let us know if you need to reschedule an appointment because you or anyone in your household is self-isolating or have had a confirmed positive Covid-19 test result. We can then reallocate this appointment to another customer.     

We continue to monitor this situation very closely and will keep you updated as things change.   

Thank you for your ongoing support and understanding.  

Jo Ray  

Executive Director of Customer Services