The University of Northampton is our latest Business Hero – recognised for its support for the community during COVID-19.
Passionate about creating social impact, the University of Northampton made timely decisions during the pandemic – choosing to provide facilities and resources to the NHS and the local community, including their halls of residence, car parks and tannery.
The university, which has its halls of residence in the BID area and whose students shop, work and relax in the town centre, delivered several initiatives designed to support the local community.
These included setting up a COVID-19 testing centre and drive-through medical assessment centre at the university’s Development Hub and Waterside Campus car parks. With the help of their Business Support Team, Inspire2Enterprise, Alumni, and partners they also provided halls of residence for patients, NHS staff and rough sleepers, car parks for NHS staff, emergency food parcels to those in need and resources for COVID-19 testing including gloves, lab pipettes, lab plates, falcon tubes, and machines for analysing and testing samples.
Additionally, tanneries at the university’s Institute for Creative Leather Technologies (ICLT) and fashion workshops have been used to produce medical scrubs for the Scrubs Up for Northants NHS project – a voluntary group that coordinates and supplies non-surgical scrubs for NHS staff in Northamptonshire..
During the pandemic, the University of Northampton contributed over £250,000 to cover the costs of providing 154 bedrooms in student accommodation and Sunley Hotel for the NHS and other emergency service key workers and the University’s halls of residence have been accommodating 26 rough sleepers within the partnership of the Northampton’s Single Homelessness Forum. Other university facilities also have been used as a country food parcel hub and PPE storage.
The University is continuing to support local businesses in their recovery by offering a series of webinars to provide timely advice and expertise on a range of subjects such as HR, management, logistics, marketing and entrepreneurship. Their Nlive Radio daily news bulletins will also continue to run – talking about local news as a legacy element of COVID-19.
The university would like to thank all of its staff who worked long hours, and used incredible teamwork, thoughtfulness and creativity to make such a difference.
For further details about the full range of support provided by UoN to the community in response to the pandemic, please click here.
