Milton Keynes firm's offer to make 1,000 sets of PPE scrubs a week was 'ignored' by government

Tailoring specialists DNA Manufacturing Clothing Ltd has made repeated requests to the government over the past six weeks but they have not even had a reply, said company owner Alicja Malkowski this week.

She has been forced to furlough her excellent tailors and the government is paying 80 per cent of their wages while their professional sewing machines are unused.

Meanwhile Alicja and her staff are working voluntarily from home, making a few sets of scrubs a week through a local Facebook group.

"It seems a crazy situation. All we want to do is help. We could make 1000 sets of NHS-approved scrubs a week easily and for a very good price. Surely it would be better and cheaper to buy British than buy them from abroad when they take so long to arrive?" she said.

"The government is having to pay 80 per cent of my workers' wages when they could be working for them making scrubs that are desperately needed for the NHS. It does not make any sense.All we need is a pattern and we can make whatever they need."

The MK Citizen tried to contact city MPs Ben Everitt and IainStewart to ask them to urgently raise the matter with the relevant minister.

Both MPs denied receiving the request from DNA Manufacturing but both said they had received high volumes of offers of help from businesses and individuals in Milton Keynes.

They said these offers had been passed on to ministers where appropriate and they gave details of the government website where companies can make their offers of help.

Iain Stewart said: "Where companies have offered assistance, I have passed details to the relevant department, as per Government guidelines. I would be delighted to pass Mr Mitchell’s details on should he like me to do so."

But DNA Manufacturing made its offer on the same government website weeks ago, when it was first launched.

"We heard nothing," said Alicja.

"They don't seem to want to know about us."

The Citizen contacted the Milton Keynes MPs again, pointing out that DNA Manufacturing had already gone through the official route to no avail as yet.

Again we urged Mr Stewart and Mr Everitt to intervene.

But Mr Everitt's communications officer Liam Andrews said: "Both Iain and Ben have been clear that they have not received offers of PPE support to the government from this company. There is nothing further to add on this."

The situation has been slammed as scandalous by a PPE manufacturing expert in Milton Keynes, Ian Todd Weller, who has written to former Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom to complain.

He has spent 45 years in the trade and now works as an international PPE clothing consultant and weeks ago submitted to the government a list of companies that could manufacture or supply PPE immediately during the crisis.

This list included DNA Manufacturing Clothing Ltd.

"I was ignored," said Ian.

"I don't understand why the government are not allowing factories to produce these scrubs. We should be utilising the British factories that are idle at present in the UK. It just doesn't make sense."

Meanwhile the government has struck a deal with a commercial supplier in Turkey for 84 tonnes of protective equipment which landed in the UK this morning.