Police Team Up With Belper Firm To Provide PPE

Police staff from the Crime Scene Investigation team in Ripley have teamed up with a local business and donated materials to allow them to make face guards for NHS staff and other key workers treating Covid-19 patients.

Ripley CSI Unit donated acetate sheets, which have a type of salt in them that is used in many products like cosmetics, cleaning supplies, and textiles. We use the sheets to collect footwear marks at crime scenes.

Belper based company Forty Five degrees Design & Print were then able to make the protective face visors, and has already made thousands.

In each pack there is one headband with ten acetate sheets – they are washable so key workers can get two uses out of each sheet.

The visors have already been sent to local organisations including Kingsmill Hospital’s maternity ward, and distributed to teams across Derbyshire that need them.

They are aiming to make 18,000 in total to donate.

Crime Scene Investigator Zoe Parnell, who organised the donation, said: “We originally saw Dean’s appeal on Facebook, and really wanted to be a part of the wonderful thing he is doing.

“We have plenty of acetate and arranged for some packs to be taken to Dean to trial. He sent us a picture of the finished visors and said our sheets worked really well, so our colleagues at Derby were able to donate some more.

“We are so happy to have been able to help.”

Director of Forty Five degrees Design & Print, Dean Bradshaw, said: “We started with an aim to make and donate 1000 visors to the NHS, we then increased this to 2,500 and then 5,000. However with support from our customers, friends and the community, we have now well and truly surpassed this.

“We now pledge to make more than 18,000 visors supplied with comfortable headbands to be sent out to help the NHS, Care Homes, Care in Home Companies, and other key workers. I’d like to say a huge thanks for all the donations we have had so far and continue to receive to help us, the sense of community is just fantastic and we will not stop until this is over.”