Like so many other businesses that are impacted by the increasing restrictions designed to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, we must also make changes to how we operate.
For the first time since March 2006 – when the first issue of the Wanstead Village Directory was published – our magazine will cease to be delivered door to door until further notice. All 6,500 copies of our April 2020 issue will be printed as normal, but instead of delivering 5,500 of them to homes in the area as we normally do, we will be distributing them all via our display stands instead.
The reasons for doing this are twofold. Most importantly, we all have a responsibility to adhere to social distancing guidelines, so I believe it would be wrong to ask my delivery team to walk the streets of Wanstead and risk interacting with others. In addition to this, a recent study by the US National Institutes of Health (as reported by the BBC here) has found the virus can survive on cardboard for up to 24 hours. So I can’t, in all good conscience, allow our magazines to be posted through letterboxes on a mass scale when there is a potential risk that this may be contributing to the spread of the virus. Instead, we will allow those who wish to pick up a copy to do so from our stands (by virtue of our normal processes, a period of at least 24 hours will elapse between our magazines being packed at the printers and placed in our stands).
A decision on the publication of future issues will be taken in the coming weeks.
