As we get closer to the Christmas holidays and the end of 2020, we will inevitably reflect on how the pandemic has impacted our way of life. From March onwards our customers, teams and partners have all had to adjust to life in the shadow of Covid-19 which meant a lot of compromise and changes to the way we do things. At an early point in the pandemic, we identified that a large group of our customers may have found themselves isolated from social contact due to the lockdown rules. A group of ateb team members came together to form the Welfare Team who set about making contact to those who needed to hear a voice, ask a question or source some help. The Welfare team were talking to hundreds of people and connecting with many other local community groups to form a support network to ensure mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. We learnt a lot from this time and plan to retain and build on the welfare teams experience going forward.

It is also worth noting that ateb managed to keep delivering a substantial range of services in spite of the disruption the pandemic brought. Throughout the year our trade teams have continued to service boilers, attend emergency repairs and even undertake some planned external improvements. Our development sites were closed for a few weeks but our contractors adapted, open the sites back up and continued to build the new homes our communities remain desperate for. We worked directly with the local authority to ensure that no one was homeless in Pembrokeshire and we worked with a range of partners to remotely resolve community issues. Our customer services team have remained available for customer calls, offer money solution advice and even arrange video chats. Behind the scenes, our normally office based teams have all been working remotely from their homes in a virtual online world. The ateb teams have shown a tremendous amount of resolve to find new ways to ‘get things done’ and make sure that our customers continue to receive the best services we can offer in the safest way possible, my thanks to them and to our customers who have patiently respected the circumstances within which we have been operating.

Alas 2021 will now start with a level 4 lockdown meaning that we will need to adjust some of our services to ensure we keep everyone safe, please keep an eye on our website and social media for latest announcements through the Christmas holiday period. Although this is not the best way to start the new year, other news regarding vaccine programmes will give us hope that as we go through 2021, the worst of the pandemic will be left behind us. Please be assured that the ateb team will always seek to deliver the best services we can and as safely as we can.

Thank you for all your support, feedback and suggestions for improvement over the last year, we do appreciate hearing our customer’s voice. Please enjoy your Christmas holiday plans, keep safe and we look forward to hopefully a better 2021 for all.

Nick Hampshire

Chief Executive

On behalf of the ateb Group Board and all our ateb teams

Published: 17/12/2020