It is very exciting that congregational worship has restarted at St Peter’s church; Palm Sunday was the first service in the church with a congregation since the beginning of January.  There are still lots of  restrictions in place: numbers are limited, we still have to wear masks, keep our distance from each other, and we can’t sing yet.

A major difference is that many in the congregation have now received their first, or even both, vaccinations.  So, even though we still have to take precautions and be careful, there is less risk and less fear about the virus spreading.

At the time of writing, we are still on schedule to re-open the building to community groups from 12th April, in line with the government ’roadmap’. Our children’s activity providers such as Mini-Maestros, Sapphire Supreme Majorettes, and the Total Sport youth club will be resuming straightaway.

We are awaiting further guidance about our community activities for older people, including the Tuesday lunch club, Stanley Community Singers and Knit & Natter but hope that we will be able to restart those too: we can run the activities in a covid-secure way and have all the necessary risk assessments and precautions in place. 

We have not made any plans yet about our coffee mornings, other fund raising events and the pantomime, except that we are unlikely to hold a summer gala this year, at least, not on our usual date at the end of June.