The government has announced the implementation of its “Plan B” for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, bringing back some social restrictions in England to curb the spread of the new Omicron variant of the virus.
The government update is attached below, and is summarised as:
- Wear a face covering from 10th December 2021
- Work from home if you can from 13th December 2021
- Use the NHS Covid Pass for attending specified venues from 15th December 2021
CMN has already been contacted by members asking how the ‘Work from Home if you can’ message should be interpreted so it is essential you know the definition provided by government allows the employer to decide who works at home. The government definition is:
- Workers who can work from home should do so from Monday 13 December. Anyone who cannot work from home should continue to go into work – for example, to access equipment necessary for their role or where their role must be completed in person. In-person working will be necessary in some cases to continue the effective and accessible delivery of some private industries. If you need to continue to go into work, consider taking lateral flow tests regularly to manage your own risk and the risk to others.
- Employers should consider whether home working is appropriate for workers facing mental or physical health difficulties, or those with a particularly challenging home working environment.
- For those who attend their workplace, the Government will continue to provide up-to-date Working Safely guidance on how employers can reduce the risks in their workplace. Businesses should consider this guidance when preparing their health and safety risk assessments, and put in place suitable mitigations.
For any further help and advice please Contact us today
Government Links
- COVID-19: support for businesses
- Coronavirus (COVID-19): what you need to do
- Coronavirus Financial Support-HM Government
- Coronavirus Business Advice-HM Government
- Up to date information from the Growth Hub
- Guidance for employers and businesses
- Government business Support helpline
Other Useful links
Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Digital Skills Partnership is working with other Digital Skills Partnership areas, to support communities during this time in drawing together information on digital tools that are freely available to support remote working for example, together with digital training to support the use of those tools.
Cornwall Marine Network have been working hard to digest, understand and relate the changing restrictions and what that means for our member business and the wider marine industry and updating our support.
With this in mind we have now developed and added a new rapid response service to support businesses with:
- How to manage the return to work post lockdown in different scenarios
- Assistance to recover / resume
- Site access and logistic
- Support to protect staff
- Social distancing at work
- Maintaining organisational culture and managing behaviours post lockdown to consider
- Help to sustain the business
- Advice and guidance on recovery planning
- Creating a culture of learning
- Helping Apprentices Back to work
- Recruiting during Coronavirus
- Plus our usual range of support, training and other specialist advice available from CMN.
- Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Digital Skills Partnership is working with other Digital Skills Partnership areas, to support communities during this time in drawing together information on digital tools that are freely available to support remote working for example, together with digital training to support the use of those tools.
- Click Here for the Covid-19 Resilience:Digital tools and Skills
Please contact the CMN team if you would like to discuss any of the following:
As part of the government’s support, businesses of all sizes, including those with fewer than 50 employees, can register to order free lateral flow tests for their employees that can provide results within 30 minutes. These are very effective in identifying asymptomatic people when used under supervised conditions. Testing is recommended to take place at least twice per week.
To find out more, visit
The Government has produced a vast amount of guidance for businesses to consider when planning to return, which the team at CMN has summarised for you.
This new resource summarises many of the key issues you need to consider when producing your workplace risk assessment
Please click here for CMN Workplace Risk Assessment – Return, Re-Start and Recover
The team at CMN are able to support you with help and advice in any of the following areas. We are developing on-line resources to further help you.
- Change Management
- Vision setting
- Remote business skills workshops
- Business planning
- Identify the skills and training support you and your staff need.
- Contact us to see if you qualify for our new training grants
- Develop your Website
- Advice on improving productivity
- CMN Virtual Training and Training Solutions
Please contact the CMN team if you would like to discuss any of the following:
Cornwall Marine Network is offering your business the opportunity to employ young people for 6 months at no overall cost.
The team at CMN has modified our training content to allow the following skills improvements to be delivered remotely, ‘home to home’.Ideal if you have downtime or staff based at home and able to devote some time to gaining personal development before the recovery comes, so please choose from the following workshop options and click this LINK to let the CMN team know which courses you want.
As a further gesture of support to you, we are not charging for your participation until further notice.
- Marketing Your Business
- Customer Service
- Time Management
- Making the Sale – No Fear!
- Effective Marketing Strategies
- Change Management
- Apprenticeship Guide for Employers
- HR Appraisals and Managing Individual Performance
- People Management for New Supervisors
- Conflict Management
- Managing Difficult Behavior/ Building Effective Teams
- Complaint Handling
- Employability for those facing redundancy
- Finance for Non-Financial Managers
- Procurement/ Supply Chain Management
- Telesales
- Negotiation in Sales
- Objection Handling in Sales
- Introduction to Leadership and Management
- Assertive Management
- Intro to Event Management
- Mentoring in the Workplace
- Prejudice in the Workplace; Understanding and Mitigating
- Effective Problem Solving
Despite the current challenges, CMN has won a significant new Training Project Fund worth £3.5 million. The project is called ‘Employer Led Skills’ and for the first time we are able to support ANY training for your business (subject to eligibility). This has never been available in Cornwall before.
The fund offers grants towards the cost of your training, provided it is arranged via CMN. The training support will be more specialist than the current free remote training workshops and we will operate on a first come, first served basis.
We will however reserve and guarantee grants for any members who let us know the training you will most likely need when we get somewhere back to ‘normal’ so please use this link to request contact from our Skills Broker team.
Part of our crisis planning has been to develop a 10-point plan that we are using as our framework to inform how we manage the current situation we find ourselves in.
We’ll be launching a weekly forum through our member messaging next week and be setting some live Q&A along with organising some bite size sessions on crisis and change management.
Alternatively if you’d like to speak to a member of the team 121, contact us today
CMN Face-2-Face is a new initiative. We will run weekly digital Face-2-Face webinars that will take place every weekfor the foreseeable future.
The webinar will allow you to access and discuss crisis help with the CMN team along with members and associates from the local sector to share ideas and allow us to better understand how COVID-19 virus crisis is affecting each of you.
We look forward to connecting with you
We are also launching a Members Forum through our member messaging and will be setting up some live Question & Answer opportunities, we will get in touch with details of those.
The team at CMN has been working proactively with a growing number of you to help mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic across our sector in Cornwall. Early crisis management gained traction with some immediate issues being solved on an increasing scale, especially with our support to help many of you gain Business Rate and the new Discretionary Rate Grants.
We know the seasonal trades within leisure marine depend on tourism and we need support to extend beyond the short term. This part of our sector has lost significant income for 2020 and into 2021, as lockdown measures and social distancing has meant loss of tourism business.
Please contact the CMN team if you need any assistance
More than ever at this important time, Members have an opportunity to help each other, so please use CMN to create opportunities for you to share with each other.
You may have solutions others will benefit from, or by having joint discussions you have the opportunity to learn from each other.
CMN will ensure we are a vehicle for questions, referrals, ideas and thoughts, jobs and news, directory listings, and that you benefit from our partnerships and knowledge base as well as giving you visibility through our social and partner channels where we can.
Log into the members area to make full use of these tools, Contact me if you are having any log in issues
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- Member messaging
- Jobs board
- News uploads
- Directory listing updates
- Social Media Sharing service on Facebook and Twitter
For any help and advice please Contact us today
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