The Prime Minster announced yesterday (23 June 2020) that many businesses and venues in England will be allowed to reopen on Saturday 4 July 2020 if they are COVID-19 secure.
These businesses include:
- Hotels, B&Bs, holiday homes and campsites – shared facilities must be cleaned properly
- Restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars – with a table service only indoors, and customer will be asked to provide their contact details to help with contact tracing
- Cinemas, museums and galleries
- Hair salons and barbers – must have protective measures, such as visors, in place
- Libraries and community centres
- Places of worship – singing will be banned
- Outdoor playgrounds and gyms
- Funfairs, theme parks and amusement arcades
- Zoos, aquariums, farms, safari parks and wildlife centres – where animals are exhibited
- Theatres and music halls – not allowed to hold live performances
Before opening, businesses are first required to put place sufficient measures to ensure the health and wellbeing of both their employees and customers. Government guidance on reopening your business can be found here. The link will take you to an online risk assessment provided by the government. After answering a few questions related to your business and the way in which you work it you will be provided with a guide specific to you.
The Prime Minister also announced the easing the two-metre social distance rule. People should remain two-metres apart where possible but a ‘one-metre plus’ rule would be introduced. The Prime Minister advised that people should ideally mitigate for example by using face coverings and not sitting face-to-face when less than two-metres from each other but, where it is possible to keep two-metres apart, people should.