Rhys Taylor-Brown

Although the world is now beyond acquainted with Covid-19, “unprecedented” remains a buzzword in describing the nature of the pandemic. Indeed, it is a challenge that Raqia Bibi, one of the chiefs of RB Care Homes, had not anticipated or planned for throughout her 20-year career in healthcare.

During the early onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, it may have seemed easy for business leaders to become embroiled in panic and inertia in the wake of such tremendous uncertainty. Of course, maintaining a cool head during any testing time is one of the cornerstones of effective leadership, but for one managing director, establishing a new structure early on and adapting quickly to new circumstances proved equally important.

Water companies have been in calls for households to stop using sprinklers and hosepipes as dry weather throughout the spring and August coupled with the UK lockdown has seen UK water usage soar.

The Covid-19 pandemic has proved a significant challenge for many sectors of British industry and the legal sector is one that has not remained unaffected. Indeed, the Ministry of Justice classified lawyers, particularly in the realm of wills and probate, as key workers who should continue to operate through the pandemic.

The Covid-19 lockdown period has brought about much discussion about the future of the conventional office space. With many UK employees having spent months working remotely, there is the possibility of firms jettisoning the costs of office spaces and deploying their workforce to carry out tasks from home in the longer term. However, Roy Dykes, owner of London-based high pressure water jetting equipment and training courses specialist firm, Jetmasters, argues that there should always be a place for the office in the workplace of the future.

Vocational Skills Solutions is a provider of vocational and bespoke training and development programmes, and like many firms and institutions in the industry, it has been forced to contend with a ceasing of face-to-face training provision during the Covid-19 lockdown period and a move toward online services. However, when speaking on the Leaders Council podcast, VSS managing director Phil Juniper stressed that large scale delivery of online learning cannot be the long-term strategy for the industry, and that the sector must find people-centric solutions.

Much has been made of the fact that getting children back into school in September is a top priority for prime minister Boris Johnson and his government, with many pupils having lost out on a significant amount of contact time with their teachers over 2020. While schools have already been preparing themselves by adhering to safety guidelines and implementing new procedures, it by no means guarantees a smooth transition back to the customary running of education, with a number of issues looming large. Speaking on the Leaders Council podcast, Nigel Attwood, headteacher of Bellfield Junior School in Birmingham, discussed his views about what the education sector and indeed society can expect as schools return.

Although the ongoing Covid-19 situation has seen demand for goods and services fluctuate in certain industries with income evaporating almost completely for some firms, for payroll and employment practice specialists like Morewood Accounting, the lockdown period has been very much non-stop considering that their services have been vital to the smooth operation of the government’s furlough scheme.

The UKHospitality trade body has issued a warning that has reverberated throughout the industry, revealing that over three quarters of hospitality businesses in the UK are at risk of insolvency within the next 12 months. In conversation with the Leaders Council, Colin Thompson, owner and co-director of Scotland’s Dornoch Castle Hotel, reflects on how his business has kept itself afloat through the lockdown period, while Steve Hill of independent frozen food storage facility Hemswell Coldstore in Lincolnshire, shares his experiences of how his hospitality sector clients have been affected.

While the Covid-19 pandemic has placed enormous strain upon the health and social care sectors, recognition of the industry’s efforts has been apparent across the UK, with the weekly clap for carers, nurses, doctors and key workers one such gesture of appreciation. However, for one industry chief, Pericles co-founder Paulamaria Blaxland-de Lange, recognition of the sector’s struggles must now translate to tangible action in the shape of additional funding.

Communities secretary Robert Jenrick has said this week that schools will be safe to reopen in September and that getting children back into full-time education is an “absolute priority” for the government.

London based online market research agency FlyResearch has been issuing weekly polls to its research panel of over 3000 people throughout the coronavirus lockdown in the UK, in order to project how the outbreak and the implementing of social distancing has been impacting the daily life of UK citizens. In continuation of his analyses previously reported by The Parliamentary Review, managing partner Greg Ward discusses the findings from the eighteenth wave of the Covid-19 tracker survey with the Leaders Council, published on July 30 and sourced from data collected on July 24.

In part of its plans to avoid mass unemployment in the UK, the government has launched an initiative to provide 30,000 new traineeships to get young people in England working to help breathe new life into an economy recovering from the impact of Covid-19.

The Covid-19 lockdown has made many people appreciate a trip to the local barber or hairdresser more than ever before, with the reopening of hairdressers from July 4 greeted in several instances by socially distanced queues on the street outside premises. However, it will not be a return to the environment of the hairdressing salon as it was before, with operators having to adhere to strict new safety procedures.

Author C.S. Lewis once said that hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny, and the testing times of the Covid-19 pandemic have seen that statement ring true in the fact that individuals have brought the best out in themselves in a time of adversity and business leaders are seeing the positives of learning from having to manage a crisis.