Colchester United Football in the Community, (FITC), are still awaiting further guidance from the Government and other professional bodies before a decision is made on a return of programmes delivered in the community.
The U's charity arm are actively working towards a start date of 1st July 2020 for some of their projects, however FITC is not currently expecting an immediate return of face-to-face delivery on programmes and all provision will continue to be delivered online where possible.
Until there has been further information released from the government, alongside further guidance from the FA and Sport England, it is not felt that it is currently necessary to open its facilities or programmes for delivery.
Risk assessments, projects plans and other protocols are being looked at to allow for a swift return to action when possible, however, this will not happen until the full safety of all its participants and staff in its vicinities can be ensured.
The same situation also applies to any potential customers that are looking to book one of football facilities - the full health and safety aspect for everyone cannot be fully guaranteed at this current time, so no bookings will be taken for groups of any size.
Corin Haines, Head of Community, said: "The safety of everyone comes first, it really is as simple as that."
"We continue to liaise with many authorities and at this moment in time, all of our work and delivery is centred on vulnerable individuals, groups and community projects that we deem necessary.
"We’re putting everything that we can in place so that when we can return to our face to face delivery, we will do so safely.
"However, at this current time, we still do not feel that we can do this with an acceptable level of risk to our staff, volunteers and participants."
"We appreciate people are itching to get back out onto the pitch, as we are, but following on from a number of enquiries we have received over recent days, we thought we needed to clarify our position."