28 | Accord Housing Association
Response to Covid-19
On 11th March the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of coronavirus , also known as Covid-19 to be a pandemic due to its severity and the number of countries with confirmed cases . Accord acknowledged at a very early stage that this could have an impact on the organisation and that due to the diverse nature of our services the risks would be evolving and changeable .
We have also stress tested our financial plan with the most extreme scenarios related to the pandemic , using assumptions provided by our treasury advisors and sense-checked against our own initial experience . We tested a number of multi-variant scenarios relating to operational , economic and housing market risks and in all cases the mitigations are sufficient to recover the position and ensure compliance with the tightest funders ’ covenants .
The Government enforced restrictions and social distancing measures meant that we had to rethink our service delivery . We focussed on our core activities of delivering care and housing management services . We prioritised the safety our customers and staff and therefore made some difficult decisions to postpone some non-essential activities such as construction and planned maintenance . We ensure that our front-line staff , and particularly those in our care services , have access to appropriate personal protective equipment ( PPE ) at all times and maintain compliance with CQC staffing levels through the use of overtime and temporary staff .