Dear Parents and Carers,
No water supply across the SO45 area - School closure to students Friday 3rd November 2023
The leadership team and I have been in touch with our local friends and colleagues since last night and very early this morning about the terrible news about our water supplies, hoping against hope it would be resolved for this morning.
However, as many of you will know yourselves this is not the case.
Neither we or Orchard Schools or Applemore have any running water making our sites unsafe on public health grounds in terms of toilet facilities in particular.
The UK Health Security Agency states:
• A school, nursery, playgroup, or child minder should not open in the absence of hot and cold running water.
• It is much more difficult to maintain adequate hand hygiene and hygienic toilet areas when the mains water supply is interrupted, particularly if the disruption continues for around more than one hour. Should the water supply be interrupted for more than around one hour, the principal or proprietor should assure themselves that an adequate amount of water is available during the interruption to ensure good hand hygiene and hygienic toilet areas. If not, the facility should close.
We are sure the above reads as common sense to you all, but we want just to confirm the source of the guidance we must adhere to.
In our genuine fervour to be open today, all four schools determined together to wait to confirm at 8am, in order to give things the greatest chance to be resolved, but we are all still without water, hence the absolutely gutting decision to have to close for a second day today.
We do not have any different or better advice to offer from Southern Water than yourselves as residents, though we've done our all to seek it this morning. So here's to the matter being sorted for you all and us all within today.
Work will again be set in Frog as yesterday in chronological order for the day so work for periods 4 and 5 may not yet be uploaded when your child first logs on. We monitored assignments set yesterday and saw really strong amounts of work being set and engaged with - let's go for it again today.
We can't wait to see everyone on Monday.
With our thanks for your support on a day we are making the very last decision we wanted to be making,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team