Coronavirus update: potential re-opening 25th July
The government has today announced that gyms and indoors sports facilities will be permitted to re-open on 25th July 2020. We expect that this will include our club, and know that this will be warmly welcomed by everyone - whether you be most interested in the squash, racketball, gym, table-tennis or bar facilities!
The government's guidance in relation to gyms and indoors sports centres such as ours can be found here. The committee will be meeting on Monday 13th July to further refine our plans on reopening, and we expect to be able to confirm more details shortly afterwards. While we obviously hope to reopen the club and communicate with everyone ASAP, we will still need to ask for a degree of patience: remember the club is entirely led by volunteers.
We are also expecting further 'squash club specific' guidance from England Squash shortly. It is likely that a degree of social distancing will still be required: 'full' and competitive squash and racketball may not yet be permitted.
Committee meeting held on 24th June
The committee met on 24th June, and in order to keep everyone as up to date as possible, the minutes of this meeting can be found here. Since this meeting events have of course moved on slightly with the above announcement and so should be read in this context.
How might the club be different upon re-opening?
You might be interested to watch this video prepared by England Squash, from Bedale Squash Club in Yorkshire. It offers you an insight into some of the adjustments that may be required to the way in which we operate. Of course every club is different: there may be some measures in place at Bedale which we do not adopt at Boston, and similarly we may adopt some measures not in place at Bedale.
What has been decided/done already?
While our re-opening plans are not yet finalised, there are some 'obvious' steps which will need to be or have been taken:
- Naturally any member displaying symptoms of covid-19, or who lives in a household with someone who is, will be asked to stay away from the club until they have completed the required quarantine period.
- Sanitising stations, hand gel and signage have been procured and installed all around the club.
- As with pubs and restaurants, it is likely that we will need to record details of attendance at the club, to assist with NHS Test and Trace if required. Of course, details would only ever be passed on to NHS Test and Trace - no other organisations - and only if requested by them.
- The 2019/20 Club Championships will sadly be cancelled. Given the large crowds and degree of 'mixing' required for this event, it is clearly highly unlikely that we will be able to host this event for the foreseeable future, at which point we expect to be into the 2020/21 season.
Further updates will follow as soon as we are able to provide them. We're really looking forward to warmly - but also safely - welcoming you back to the club!
PS: we are e-mailing these updates to all members for whom we hold e-mail addresses. If you wish to receive these updates via e-mail, please sign up on the 'Newsletter' page.
