Our Sellafield - August 2020

Updates Evolve Finance News August 2020 Our Sellafield I am delighted to see us getting back to some kind of normality after the disruption of recent months. People are returning, safely and with care, to our workplaces on and off the Sellafield site. On 1 August the country is taking the next steps in the Government’s Covid-19 recovery programme, with more types of businesses and venues able to reopen, reinforced by stronger local authority powers to step in and control any spikes where necessary with targeted local action. Throughout the pandemic we remained aligned with the national recovery efforts and the pace of return. As a nationally important infrastructure project delivered by thousands of key workers, we were continuing to carry out the most important work when others had stopped. I’m pleased that from Government and NDA to our local stakeholders, we have earned the confidence that our arrangements are robust and working. And now that more and more parts of the economy are restarting, more parts of our business are also ramping up – so that by the end of September every area of our work will have restarted. This doesn’t mean everyone comes back in to work all the time. There isn’t the room for us all to be back in once we’ve made the space to keep Covid-19 at bay. So, it’s not the end of home working, but it is the end of working exclusively at home. We need to interact with each other in person and re-join the human connections with our workplace and colleagues. It will take extra effort to think flexibly, look after ourselves and look after each other in this new, dynamic environment. By careful managing of our return to work we can split time with remote working and our Covid safe workplace. It will be a while yet before we can ramp our workplaces back up to 100 per cent occupancy. I would like to see more people back in the workplace as we work out how to contribute fully with a blended mix of attendance in person and remote working for many of us. Individual arrangements will be agreed with line management. As our workplace gets busier, we will all need to stay alert and adhere to the rules to keep safe. We cannot forget that people’s lives are at stake and we cannot afford to become complacent about the risk and let our guard down. Perhaps the most visible sign that we are back, not just in our workplaces, but as a fundamental part of our communities, is that we are finally able to launch our new approach to social impact – SiX. You can read more about this elsewhere in this edition. To me, not only does this signify our continued wish to help our communities, but it clarifies why it is so important. We’ve got 100 years’ worth of work at Sellafield and to do it we need a skilled, resilient, and resourceful community that can host a range of businesses in support of that work. In turn, that requires a healthy and motivated population, high levels of educational attainment, self-reliance, and entrepreneurialism. That’s what our social impact programme is all about. SiX – social impact multiplied, because with our partners and supply chain, we can do more together than alone. Martin Chown, CEO Chief executive column Stay Safe & Be Kind News