Saint Catherine's on Yorkshire Coast outlines plans to survive lockdown

Saint Catherine's on the Yorkshire Coast has been outlining its plans on surviving a second lockdown.

England will see tougher restrictions come into effect from tomorrow (Thursday 5th November).

Mike Wilkerson, Chief Executive of Saint Catherine's, said:

"It's frustrating because we're obviously like everybody having to close our shops and retail operations again.

"So it will mean we have a small number of staff back on the furlough scheme, but it doesn't affect what we're doing in terms of what services we're providing.

"It is a shorter lockdown at this stage as far as we all know which is helpful.

"Like everybody, we'll have to wait and see as the weeks progress what that looks like as we near the 2nd of December, but it would be brilliant if we can open our shops again.

"Being able to take advantage of the job furlough scheme again this time will help. It's a small contribution.

"We did a lot of financial modelling to look at not just the next 12 months, but to look at the next six years ahead; and so our plans took into account other lockdowns, so we'd already prepared for the fact that there may well be further lockdowns by the Government in this pandemic.

"What does help us is the regular on-going support and we've seen incredible support over the last 8-9 months from the local community.

People have continued to donate, they've continued to undertake events and that really has helped us and we really do value that support."