Calls to businesses to back county PPE drive
THE Lord Lieutenant is teaming up with councils and business leaders in a new drive urging companies to donate personal protective equipment (PPE) for key workers.
The appeal – spearheaded by Mike Kapur – asks firms to donate any new and unused items such as fluid-resistant surgical masks, nitrile gloves, goggles, disposable aprons or overalls, sanitising gel and overshoes, and to consider using their factories or equipment to produce more of these items.
Leicestershire County Council and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership are backing the call to bolster stocks of equipment for staff in the NHS, social care, children’s homes, homeless shelters, community pharmacies and more.
Mike Kapur, Lord-Lieutenant of Leicestershire, said: “Donations have been brilliant. Now we need to ask our bigger companies and partners across our area to step in. Could you help?
“We are looking for PPE equipment in bulk, if possible. Our communities have been so generous, now we need a response at scale to help keep our frontline workers safe.
“Businesses can’t return to anything like normal until the NHS can get on top of the virus, so it’s very much in businesses’ interests to do what they can to help.
“I know many manufacturers have risen to the challenge and offered their amazing support and entrepreneurial skills to produce PPE. Thank you.
“We are dealing with these requests as quickly as we can. Naturally, we are prioritising those ready now to make kit at the right standards.
“There’s great advice on the Government website – and at the LEP’s site – which can help manufacturers understand what we’re looking for. Getting the specifications right from the beginning means we can move quickly and get your machines working!” Nick Rushton, leader of Leicestershire County Council, said: “Businesses have risen to the challenge and I’d like to thank those who have donated vital supplies.
“In Leicestershire, we have world-leading companies and people with significant expertise and contacts – and we’re particularly keen to talk to them to and think creatively about how supplies can be sourced or made to the right standards. “These remain extremely trying times and every day, our social care staff, alongside NHS colleagues, are working tirelessly to provide crucial round-the-clock support. This equipment helps key workers to support our most vulnerable people in their homes.”
The move also fully supports the #ppe4nhs campaign which is now expanding into Leicestershire after receiving more than 15,000 items of PPE in Ashfield and Mansfield in less than two weeks.
Campaign co-ordinator Malcolm Healey said: “We’re so pleased with the response from businesses in Mansfield and Ashfield, that we’ve now expanded the project into Leicestershire.
“If we can generate that much support in one area, the potential to
TO make a PPE donation, email the ppe4nhs address below with details of items you can donate and to arrange a drop-off time.
To get involved in manufacturing PPE, please se the website, below, do so much more across Leicestershire is huge.
“We now have drop off centres at various locations across the county, where businesses can take their donations and we’ve had terrific support from Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service, which has opened up six fire stations as drop off points.”
Kevin Harris, chairman of the LLEP board of directors, said: “We have fantastic businesses and organisations who have already donated or are making items of PPE for the NHS, but we still have a local need to provide PPE across a wide range of organisations within the healthcare, social care and support sectors.”
We need to ask our bigger companies and partners across our area to step in
for details on how to engage and specifications on PPE items to ensure it can be manufactured to correct standards.