Freedom Lifestyle Villages COVID-19 update – March 20 2020
The health, safety and wellbeing of our residents and staff remains our primary focus during the current coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic.
As we prioritise everyone’s welfare, we assure you that we will fully comply with all advice and directives from Government and health authorities
To ensure we can proactively monitor and respond to developments as they arise, our senior leadership team is committed to:
- Providing a safe environment for our people.
- Proactively monitoring the evolving COVID-19 situation.
- Facilitating rapid, fact-based decisions about necessary adjustments to operating policies.
- Providing daily risk management advice.
UPDATES TO OPERATING POLICIES
Operationally, our overarching strategy in response to the pandemic is to lower the risk of exposure by greatly reducing the level of contact between individuals.
As well as following all Ministry of Health guidelines, we have introduced a number of measures that we believe will help minimise the spread of COVID-19 that are in line with best practice.
These include:
- Putting a hold on all promotional activity and asking all interested parties to make enquiries on the website or call 0800 OVER 50 (0800 6837 50), rather than visit a village directly.
- Suspending all village social activities, happy hours and meetings, including use of the village van other than for essential services.
- Putting all non-essential visits by contractors / staff to village residents on hold. Restricting staff travel movements between villages and avoiding face-to-face team meetings.
- Requiring all visitors staying with, or intending to stay with residents to complete a declaration form confirming their travel history, contact with COVID-19 and anyone in self-isolation.
- Increasing cleaning of high touch points in the village and introducing additional sanitisation stations.
- Promoting good hand hygiene as well as cough and sneeze etiquette amongst staff and residents.
Importantly, in order to protect our people, we respectfully request that people DO NOT visit any of our villages if:
- They are feeling unwell
- Have returned from overseas in the last 14 days.
- Have been in contact with someone confirmed or suspected of having COVID-19.
CONTINUING TO DELIVER
While the practicalities of reducing contact between individuals will impact on the social lifestyles associated with our village, we are confident everyone will quickly adapt to the new environment we find ourselves in.
We are in regular contact with our resident communities and will continue supporting them in every way we can to handle these challenges.
We will continue to monitor the situation daily, and wish to thank all our residents, staff, contractors and suppliers for the efforts they are taking to ensure the wellbeing of everyone in the village.
