Age UK BRWF starts to Re-open its Charity Shops

An update from Age UK BRWF's CEO Sam Humphray (17th June 2020)

Thanks to the amazing efforts of our Retail Team, I am really pleased to confirm that our Mason Road Charity Shop (Redditch) is now open and that it will be followed by our Providence Road (Sidemoor, Bromsgrove) and New Road (Rubery) shops in the next couple days.

It has been over 12 weeks since our shops were last open - we have all experienced considerable changes in our lives during this time. Our shops have always been such an important part of their communities - we have missed that ‘connection’ and the incredible support of our donors and loyal customers.

Whilst we are so very much looking forward to welcoming people back to our shops, our priority is to ensure that we keep people safe, so we have implemented a series of measures to ensure that we meet the Government’s strict guidelines, including the installation of Hand Sanitising Stations, perspex screens at our tills and the introduction of signage and markings around the shops to help social distancing (please use this link for full details of all the measures that we are taking and the changes that we are implementing).

We know that many people have been having clear-outs during lockdown and are keen to bring in their donations to help raise funds to support our local work, however we are having to put in place new processes to receive and handle donations (as items will need to be stored for 72 hours before they can be processed and storage space at our shops is limited). We will, therefore, only be accepting donations on TUESDAYs, THURSDAYs and SATURDAYs between the following times:

• 9.30am–10.30am
• 3.30pm–4.30pm

If you can, please can we ask that you also stagger your donations (rather than bringing everything at once). To help us to adapt to these new ways of working and to keep everybody safe, our shops will initially be closed on Sundays.

We would really welcome everyone’s support and understanding with the changes that we are making.

We will continue to monitor all the measures that we are putting in place and will make adjustments as required. Using our experiences from Mason Road, Providence Road and New Road, we will then plan to re-open our five remaining Charity Shops.

Things will be different as we all seek to adapt to the ‘new normal’, but it is the people and the communities that we support that make our shops the special places that they are, and this hasn’t changed. So to all our previous visitors to our shops, we look forward to welcoming you back and to anybody that hasn’t visited one of our shops before we look forward to welcoming you!