A message to all our amazing supporters and regular visitors.
As you may have seen in our announcement last week, at the beginning of March the Directors of Re:Fuel created a written COVID-19 response plan. The purpose of this plan was to ensure, as a public venue/gathering, that we were doing, and continue to do, all we can to protect the health and well-being of the public during the virus outbreak. We have been monitoring the COVID-19 situation daily and also the official guidance from the UK Government, NHS, Public Health England, and the World Health Organisation – and updating our response plan accordingly.
Based on the information and guidance available at the time, our March Open Day ran in the end. As per our response plan, we worked closely with our hosts, Mansell Raceway, and our food and drink vendors to implement special measures to minimise any health risks to our visitors and staff. This led to increased hygiene procedures – particularly on the gate and by our food vendors. The Mansell restaurant also acquired supplies of a WHO recommended cleaning solution for “contact surfaces” that has been proven to eliminate COVID-19.
Since our March Open Day, the situation has rapidly escalated and at a meeting of the Directors last Friday 20th March we took the decision to cancel, as a minimum, our April and May Open Days. At the time we were unsure as to whether we would be “allowed” to run the Open Day in April – but decided that the responsible action, irrespective of government guidance, was to hit the pause button for a minimum of two months. Obviously a decision made with a heavy heart, but absolutely the right decision in the circumstances that we all find ourselves in.
Since that decision was made, as I’m sure you are all aware, the government has announced further restriction on gatherings and movement of people. Although, technically, this only currently affects April, we stand by our decision to cancel a minimum of our April and May Open days in the interests of public health. We will continue to monitor the situation and, of course, may take additional steps in the coming weeks in terms of the cancellation of further Open days in June and the months following.
Thank you so much to all of our supporters and regular visitors, and for your understanding and continued support. We hope that you all stay safe and well, and that it won’t be too long before we see you all again. We are also currently working on something fun and digital to replace the cancelled Open Days – so please keep an eye on our social media in the coming weeks for further details.
All the best,
Dan, Josh, George and the rest of the Re:Fuel team