Storage highs and lows

We’re very sad to say that our storage container was broken into again and this time it was a targeted attack as nothing else in the yard was touched.  A few months ago the same criminals broke into it and stole some boxes of mainly second hand kit.

Each time they cause damage to the depot gates, break into a van which is parked infront of the container and then damage the security bolts.  If there is any small consolation, the container was actually empty this time, so all of their efforts were in vain.

We can therefore no longer risk using the container as the criminals are likely to try again and we now need to re-site it at a more secure site.

Until we can find a new home our couriers cannot collect kit for us from all over the UK which means that we are building up a backlog of collections and probably losing some out on some donations.

We have just had an article posted on the Harlow Star website asking for an local businesses to help us with storage, so fingers crossed, we will receive a positive reply soon.  This does mean that until it is resolved, we cannot collect from any regional co-ordinators, so please bear with us.

However….

After the offer of 7,000 brand new items of kit from a company in Milton Keynes, we realised that all of our current storage was at full capacity and if we were to take advantage of this offer, we would need to find another container.  Thanks to the sterling efforts of Vickie Kirkwood, Peter Dommet and John Merrill at Affinity Water, they somehow managed to persuade Shanahan Contractors to donate a really good condition container.  This is now located at a very secure site and is currently full of 7k items of great new kit.

Containers are expensive to buy, generally retailing at circa £1k, so this was a very generous offer from Shanahans.

A really strange month in terms of containers and hopefully by the next update we will be able to give some positive news about the relocation of the exisitng container.