Category: Blackhall

HUGE Lottery boost for North Edinburgh Childcare

An award of £770k announced today to North Edinburgh Childcare means they will be able to transform and expand their existing premises allowing them to increase the services they already provide and support even more families across the city.

The award is one of 32 groups across Edinburgh sharing in £1,299,743 of funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.

Welcoming the award, Theresa Allison, General Manager, North Edinburgh Childcare, said: “We are absolutely delighted at this award which will go towards a new build and renovations of our existing building which will enable us to create an additional 84 full-time equivalent childcare places.

“Once built this has the potential to support approximately another 200 parents/carers to lift themselves out of poverty.  We are so excited about the new build and refurbishment but even more excited that, for the first time ever, we will be able to offer a number of places to people aspiring to get into work or training. This is all possible thanks to people who play The National Lottery.”

Another capital organisation celebrating this morning is Leith’s Multi Cultural Family Base (MCFB), who receive £233,000 to deliver support services to vunerable children and families from primarily minority ethnic communities.

A spokesperson for MCFB said: We are thrilled to receive continued funding from the The National Lottery Community Fund Scotland to continue supporting children from minority ethnic communities in Edinburgh with the important transition from home and nursery to school via our 4-2-7 project.

“As well as supporting children one to one and, when possible, within school settings, this will include our continued work supporting parents by providing them a space to meet once a week to build confidence, make friendships and share experiences.

“We look forward to continuing to work with schools and families both virtually and, when we can, face to face at our offices and within schools.”

There’s also £8750 for Blackhall Playgroup, who will use their award to prepare for the easing of lockdown, putting measures in place to enable the return of some children and also provide resources to those who cannot.

And Granton Parish Church will be cooking with gas – the church on Boswall Parkway receives £10,000 for a new kitchen in the church hall, supporting numerous community groups who use the popular local facility.

Announcing today’s funding to 311 projects across Scotland, The National Lottery Community Fund’s Scotland Chair, Kate Still, said: “These awards, made possible by National Lottery players, recognise the incredible work happening  across Scotland to create stronger, more connected communities.   

“I am delighted that some of this funding will be used to transform existing buildings into vibrant community hubs that will carry on the strong community spirit that has been so evident in recent times. 

“National Lottery players can be proud to know that money they raise by buying tickets is continuing to make such a difference.” 

National Lottery players raise £30 million every week for good causes in the UK. The National Lottery Community Fund in Scotland is currently focusing its funding on those projects that supporting organisations and communities to respond to the challenge of COVID-19.  

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk       

Police appeal following local bogus caller incidents

Police are continuing enquiries and appealing for information following several bogus caller incidents in North West Edinburgh in the last few days:

1. Around 3.45 pm on Tuesday, 30 June, two men called at an elderly woman’s home in Easter Drylaw Drive. The woman paid a three figure sum for landscaping work to be carried out however the men left in a car and did not return. .

2. Around 11.30 am on Wednesday, 1 July, two men called at a house in Cramond Park stating they were there to carry out work. It was established it wasn’t prearranged work and they were asked to leave. They were driving a white van.

3. Around 1.15 pm on Thursday, 2 July, a man called at an address in Craigs Avenue offering to carry out gardening and landscaping work. The man wanted to carry out the work immediately for cash and left when the occupier refused.

Detective Sergeant Dougal Begg at Corstorphine CID said: “This type of crime is despicable and is often targeted at the elderly and vulnerable in our communities. At this time we are trying to establish whether any of these incidents are linked.

“I urge members of the public to be on guard if someone turns up unexpectedly at their home offering to carry out work, especially work that they don’t believe is required.

“Ask for identification and/or a business card so that you can make the necessary checks for verification, don’t be afraid to say no and don’t be embarrassed as genuine callers expect you to be careful.

“If you’re not sure, don’t answer the door and report the incident to police.”

Anyone who has any information relating to the above incidents or anyone who has concerns or feels that they have been a victim of a bogus crime or scam caller should contact police via telephone number 101.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Support in North Edinburgh

Local organisations have put together a booklet listing mental health & wellbeing support services in North Edinburgh (see below).

If you need support call the new Community Wellbeing Helpline on 0131 332 8773.

Sainsbury’s Update

I’m writing to you today to update you on the range of ways we are helping to get food and essential items to those who need them most (writes Sainsburys Chief Executive MIKE COUPE).

We continue to prioritise elderly and vulnerable customers for online delivery and have offered over 725,000 elderly and vulnerable people access to slots so far. We identified 450,000 of these customers based on our own data and from customers registering with us.

We have also been able to match over 275,000 additional customers in England, Scotland and Wales based on government data and we are contacting these customers to arrange priority home delivery.

We will be in touch with more customers based on the database we receive from Northern Ireland as soon as we can. For vulnerable customers who have been offered a slot and are unable to place their order online, we offer a telephone ordering service and we now have five times the number of colleagues on hand to help with this.

As we do our best to keep our colleagues and our customers safe, we have had to temporarily change some of our processes.

To help our colleagues socially distance, we are no longer asking them to accept unwanted substitutions or to process refunds on your doorstep. If you do not want the substitutions, then you need to call us to let us know and we will process the refund for you.

This is only temporary and we are working on a digital process to make this quicker and smoother. I apologise for the inconvenience in the meantime and I’ll write again to let you know when the new process is up and running.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, our online home delivery and click & collect services are in more demand than ever before.

We are increasing our capacity as much and as quickly as we can and by the end of the month we aim to offer 600,000 online slots per week. We are doing our best to add more slots and will keep going with this but it’s important that I highlight that there is far more demand for these slots at the moment than we can ever satisfy. I have therefore included below a full list of other ways to access food and other essential items.

We are doing our best to reduce queuing times both inside and outside our stores.

To help with this, we have been extending our opening hours. By Monday the vast majority of our supermarkets will be open from 08.00-22.00. We are installing perspex safety screens in our petrol filling station stores and these will start to re-open from next week.

We are also extending opening hours in many Convenience stores to 10pm or 11pm. You can check the latest opening hours in your area before shopping here.

To help with queuing inside stores, we are installing additional protective screens between manned checkouts.

These screens will help keep our colleagues and customers safe and will mean we can open far more manned checkouts in the stores that have them. We are installing them in over 150 stores over the next week or two and I will keep you updated on this and other steps we are taking to help make your shopping trip quicker and easier.

For elderly and vulnerable customers, we offer dedicated shopping hours between 08.00 and 09.00 every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And NHS and social care workers can shop in our supermarkets from 07.30 to 08.00 Monday to Saturday before they open.

We have also extended our partnership with WHSmith to provide easy access to food for NHS workers in 80 hospitals across the UK at a discounted rate.

We know that many of you are already shopping for friends, family and neighbours and we are very grateful to you for providing this community service. I mentioned in my last letter that we were launching a Volunteer Shopping Card to make it easier for people to shop for others and I am pleased to let you know that these are now available online.

For customers who are struggling to leave the house to get to the shops, we have also expanded our on-demand delivery service ChopChop to London zones 1 and 2. The service allows you to choose up to 20 of 400 grocery and essential items for home delivery within an hour. We’re looking at how we can bring this service to more people in more places across the country and I will keep you updated on progress.

Many of you have also written to ask me what additional steps we are taking to support the most vulnerable in our communities.

In addition to donating £3 million in cash to Fareshare to help to distribute food to food banks and other vulnerable communities across the UK, we are also supporting the government’s free school meal vouchers scheme, ensuring that children who qualify for free school meals can continue to access free meals while schools are closed.

Many of you are also helping us to make a real difference to communities across the UK by buying a copy of The Big Issue in stores and online. We are also supporting Comic Relief and the BBC on The Big Night In, which is raising money for people impacted by COVID-19. I hope lots of you will be able to join me in tuning in this Thursday at 7pm and donating in a range of ways if you can.

I know that most of you really appreciate the essential role that our colleagues are playing at the moment to keep the nation fed.

Our colleagues are working in really challenging circumstances, constantly trying to balance the need to serve our customers well, to keep shelves stocked and to help people get in and out of shops as quickly as possible.

We are also asking them to help us keep you safe. Unfortunately this means they will ask you to queue outside shops when they are busy. Please help us to make our colleagues’ jobs easier by showing them kindness and respect at all times.

Best wishes

Mike