John Lewis factory to make 8,000 clinical gowns for Northumbria NHS trust

It has reopened its Lancashire textiles factory, Herbert Parkinson, to make protective gowns for the NHS.

The factory usually makes bespoke blinds, curtains and pillows and duvets.

Sir James Mackey, Northumbria Healthcare chief executive, said: “We will be forever grateful for this support from John Lewis which will directly, and positively, impact on our front-line workers and patients - helping to keep them safe.

“It is clear, we can only tackle the challenges faced through utilising local channels and relationships to do so.

“It is this spirit, of pulling together, that has helped us to achieve so many things over recent weeks, at pace and without any outside influence.

“We need to embrace with open arms all offers of help and turn these into actions that support our staff and patients.”

The retailer is also donating over 20,000 metres of cotton fabric from its haberdashery departments and distribution centres to “For the Love of Scrubs” and ‘Scrubs Glorious Scrubs’, groups who now have thousands of members who are making scrubs for the NHS. The donated fabric is expected to make around 6,000 scrubs.

Stuart McDonald, head of Herbert Parkinson, said: “We’re all looking forward to re-opening our factory and threading our sewing machines again to play our part in helping the NHS. We expect to be able to produce around 2,000 gowns per week.

“The fabric we are donating for scrubs could have no better use than to keep people safe. Over the past few weeks we have already donated over 400 metres of fabric to groups making face masks and scrubs for their local hospitals, pharmacies, care homes and communities. They have told us that this has enabled them to make over 3,000 face mask linings and 75 sets of scrubs.”

John Lewis has already created a wellbeing area for staff at NHS Nightingale London and worked with the BMA to deliver 60,000 essentials to key NHS staff.

This week, the retailer will begin donating 250 electrical products such as coffee machines, kettles and toasters to staff rooms and wellbeing areas at 25 acute London hospitals, and the Nightingale in Harrogate.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you