In your weekly PCA update this week:

• Covid-Safe Training is Back!
• Member Search Referral Success
• Cotoneasters – Friend or Foe?
• Join our next Webinar!
• Future Buildings Standard Consultation – Have your Say!
• Build UK shares Guide to Workplace Testing
• HSE Increases Site Inspections

Covid-Safe Training is Back!

We were so pleased to welcome more candidates to a face-to-face setting this week as more of our members completed their CSTDB qualification, and surveyors expanded their knowledge on atmospheric moisture within buildings.

We take the safety of our candidates, staff, trainers and examiners very seriously and to ensure they continue, here are just some of the extra precautions we have put in place:

• Hand washing on entry to building
• Hand sanitiser stations around the building
• Masks to be worn by everyone whilst walking around building
• Windows and doors opened at all times to ensure good ventilation (heating is on with additional heater upstairs for those colder days)
• Regular surface sanitation
• Members of the PCA team completing voluntary Covid-19 tests up to twice a week!

To book your next training course, get in touch with the training team on 01480 400000 for more information, or click on the button below.

Member Search Referral Success

Its been a while since Andy’s last blog, but with the bizarre start to the year and local member searches and opportunities ‘going through the roof’, Andy sums up what exactly has been happening and what MIGHT be potentially happening next!

To learn more, click on the button to read his latest blog.

Cotoneasters – Friend or Foe?

Whether you say ‘Coton-e-aster’ or ‘Coton-easter’, some of them are invasive plants and listed in Schedule 9. For our invasive weed members, it’s vitally important to correctly identify them when conducting invasive weed surveys. As your Technical Manager Peter Fitzsimons points out in his latest blog, “They’re invasive, but not as we know it”!

To read the full blog, members can click on the button below…

Join our next Webinar!

Don’t miss our next webinar on ‘How to Assess if an Existing Home has “Adequate Ventilation”’. Join us and John Bradley, Homevent on Thursday 25th March 2021 from 9-10am as he discusses: “How do we know if we are ‘actually’ accessing it correctly and are we fulfilling our obligations under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act?!? With more of us at home, how do we establish if the problem is a lack of property ventilation itself, or the people living within the property?!?”.

Members can click on the button below to find out more and register.

Future Buildings Standard Consultation – Have your Say!

Last week some of the PCA team attended the virtual ‘Future Buildings Standard Consultation: Existing Buildings‘ event, hosted by The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG). For those members not aware, the consultation proposes changes to Part L and Part F of the Building Regulations for existing homes and non-domestic buildings.

The current draft is a long way from perfect, as we have previously commented (‘Consultation on Ventilation in Existing Buildings’), but is a huge opportunity for us to shape how moisture is dealt with within the built environment, and we would encourage as many of our members as possible to comment on the proposal.

Members also have an opportunity to hear from them direct and their intentions for the document at the regional meeting next week. The consultation closes on 13th April and members can comment by clicking on the button below.

Build UK shares Guide to Workplace Testing

Following the Government workplace testing programme Build UK has published a simple guide to explain asymptomatic Lateral Flow Device (LFD) testing, which sets out the steps required to set up a testing site for companies with more than 50 employees. Members can access the guide by clicking on the button below.

For those members with less than 50 workers, you can access the Government’s Community Testing Programme.

HSE Increases Site Inspections

HSE announced recently that they will be increasing inspections across the country to ensure workplaces are operating in a COVID secure manner. HSE are using representatives to carry out the vast number of Covid ‘spot checks’ and we advise members to cooperate to avoid any possible fines and enforcement action.

Members can access more information, including a short video to explain the process via the button below.

Remember to keep in the loop…

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