On Thursday England will be moving back into Covid plan A which means that although most restrictions are removed there are still some regulations in place until the end of March. As we are a small space in a listed Victorian building with limited ventilation we do get hot and steamy so we will be continuing to operate a drop and collect service only and our current opening hours until the start of April, (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday – 9.30am-4.30pm; Saturday & Sunday – 9.00am-5.00pm), unless Government regulations change. This is to keep you and our staff safe – Covid can be spread easily in spaces like launderettes. As we prepare to open up for self-service in April we will be looking at extending our opening hours again, although we will remain closed on Wednesdays. We thank you all for your patience and support throughout this really tough time for all of us.
We follow government Covid19 guidance, which currently says: “As England moves out of Covid19 Plan B restrictions the government has announced that the measures put in place under plan B in England will be lifted. You should continue to follow safer behaviours to protect yourself and others:
Due to essential electrical work being carried out on the boiler on Monday it may not be possible to do your washing and drying as quickly as usual, and some washing may not be ready until Tuesday.Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, we are working with the engineers to keep any disruption to an absolute minimum.Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Also, please remember that prices increase from Monday. They’re our first price increases for almost 8 years and we’ve kept them as low as possible, in line with our community ethos.
Happy New Year to all of our customers and friends – we look forward to seeing you soon. We’re staying with our current opening hours and operating on a drop-off and collect service until further notice to protect you and our brilliant staff. Our premises are very small and we wouldn’t be able to maintain the social distancing or guarantee proper ventilation required if we opened up to the public and we wouldn’t be happy to think we were putting anyone at risk. We want to return to being a welcoming self-service laundry and community space again as we will do that as soon as it is safe to do so, and we thank you for your understanding and continued custom and support during these difficult times for all of us.
As we mentioned in our previous post we are, unfortunately, having to increase our prices for the first time since 2014 and our prices will be increasing on 17th January 2022. We were originally planning to do this in April 2020 but decided not to during lockdowns and the emergency but the huge increases in gas prices, other utilities and running costs mean that we are unable to hold off any longer. We’ve made sure that we have cut our running costs as much as we safely can, and this has included changing our energy supplier to the far cheaper Octopus, who also happen to be a green energy supplier. We know that these are difficult times for everyone and we have kept the increases as low as possible.
Prices from 17th January 2022:
Small Machine
£ 5.00 (+£1.00)
Large Machine
£ 6.00 (+£1.00)
Extra Large Machine
£ 8.00 (+£2.00)
Drying
£1.00 for 12 minutes (+20%)
There will be no price increase for soap, conditioner, bleach or bags.
Service Charges will also increase for business customers from 17th Jan, and for household customers when we reopen for self-service washing. These will be the first service charge increases since 2008.
Business/Commercial Laundry
£3.00 per machine, (from 17th January).
Household Laundry
£2.50 per machine, (when open for self-service)
We are sad to say that two directors have stood down with effect from the 31st December 2021: Jean Locker, who was a founding director since 1992 and part of the group of residents who campaigned for the launderette to open in 1990, and Anita Nightingale who joined in April 1994. Both have given us great service and we are extremely grateful to them, we’ll be keeping in touch and hope to organise a proper Boundary Estate community celebration for them later in the year. We also said goodbye to our longest serving member of staff and launderette stalwart Maire who retired in March 2021 and she will, of course, be included in the celebration. We’ll keep you posted on that! Other long-standing and much missed staff who moved on to new jobs over the past year were Sabreen (who still volunteers with us, helping oversee things), and Jasper. We’re pleased to say that we still have a great staff team who we think are pretty amazing, as all of our staff have always been – Tina, Ali and Mina, and our new weekend assistant Isabella. Two directors oversee the management and running of the launderette and will be fundraising to refurbish and improve the business in this our 30th anniversary year, they are Tabitha Morton, who joined us in March 2020, and Philip Green, a founding director who has been in from the start.
We will be closing for the Christmas and New Year holidays on Thursday 23rd December at 4.30pm (last wash 2.30pm) and reopening on Tuesday 4th January 2022 at 9.30am.
Covid19: Following Sunday’s announcement we have taken the decision to keep operating on a drop off and collect basis until further notice. This isn’t a decision we have taken lightly, we weigh up all of the pros and cons to make sure we operate to keep everyone safe and healthy. We will review the situation at the end of January, or if government announcements mean more changes have to be made, and we’ll keep you updated here.
Price Increases: We were going to increase our prices earlier this year but as the Covid emergency and then lockdowns hit we decided not to go ahead. However it is now more than 8 years since our last price increases and with the huge hikes in energy prices and all other running costs increasing rapidly we have no option other than to increase prices from mid-January as we can no longer afford to continue to meet our day-to-day costs. We have done all we can to delay this such as changing energy suppliers, (we’re now with Octopus Energy who as well as being competitive also have the benefit of being a green energy supplier), but we will not compromise on paying our staff the Living Wage Foundation rates for their hard work. We will keep our charges as low as possible in line with our community not-for-profit ethos. We’ll let you know the exact date once we’ve confirmed this with the engineer changing the coin mechanisms, and we’ll let you know the new charges by next week.
We wish you all the Compliments of the Season,
a peaceful and happy Christmas and a very happy 2022
Huge thanks to everyone who has been supporting us with our crowdfunder to refurbish and make the community launderette a brighter and more modern space for the whole community for our 30th anniversary in 2022. We know not everyone can donate but spreading the word is just as important so if you can please share our crowdfunding page: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/create-a-community-hub
Boundary Community Launderette 