Business and venue closures and restrictions

Businesses to remain closed: 

• Nightclubs, dance halls, and discotheques 

• Hospitality (e.g. bars, pubs, shisha venues, restaurants, cafes must close except for delivery, takeaway, click and collect and drive-through)

• Hotels and other accommodation providers (except for
specific circumstances, including people staying for work /education purposes or where they cannot return home). These restrictions do not apply between 24 - 26 December 2020 to enable people to stay near their Christmas bubbles.

• Indoor entertainment and tourist venues (e.g. indoor play centres and areas, trampolining parks and soft play areas, cinemas, theatres and 
concert halls, casinos, bingo halls, bowling alleys, skating rinks, amusement arcades and adult gaming centres, laser quests and escape rooms)

• Indoor attractions at mostly outdoor entertainment venues

• Conference centres and exhibition halls (for the purposes of hosting events)

Restrictions for businesses that can remain open:

• Leisure and sports facilities can remain open. However, group exercise classes (including fitness and dance) should not take place

Business and venues remaining open

• Essential and non-essential retail

• Leisure and sports facilities including gyms

• Personal care and close contact services (hairdressers,
barbers, beauty salons, tattoo parlours, nail salons, spas and beauty services, massage parlours and tanning salons)

• Public buildings (libraries, community centres 
and halls).

• Allotments, recycling and waste centres, public toilets, car
parks

• Essential public services (NHS and medical services, courts,
and jobcentre plus sites)

• Early year settings, schools, colleges and universities

• Places of worship (cannot interact with anyone outside household or bubble)

Activities allowed to continue

Exercise

• Exercise classes, organised sport and physical activity can
take place outdoors (higher-risk contact activity should be avoided)

• Exercise classes, organised sport and physical activity indoors is not permitted. There are exceptions for indoor disability sport, sport for educational purposes, and supervised sport and physical activity for under-18s

Driving Tests

• Theory tests can take place from December 2

• Driving tests can take place from December 3

Large Events

• Elite sport events can continue to take place without spectators

• Large business events are not permitted

• Large outdoors events including performances and shows are not permitted

• Drive-in events are allowed

Weddings, civil partnerships, and funerals

• Weddings and civil partnerships can take place with restrictions on numbers of attendees (max of 15 people attending)

• Wedding receptions are not allowed

• Funerals and linked commemorative events (e.g. wakes, stone settings) can take place with restrictions on numbers of attendees (up to 30 and 15 attendees respectively)

Social contact restrictions

You must not:

• Meet with anyone outside your household or support bubble in any setting indoors (Informal childcare can still be provided via childcare bubbles) or in most outdoor places (including private gardens and most outdoor venues)
• Meet in groups of larger than 6 in some other outdoor public spaces (i.e. parks, beaches, countryside accessible to the public, a public garden, grounds of a heritage site or castle, or a sports facility). This limit does not apply to meetings of a single household group or support bubble which is more than 6 people 

View Exemptions from gatherings limits.

Visiting relatives/friends in care homes

You can:

• Visit friends or family in care homes with COVID-secure arrangements (i.e. substantial screens, visiting pods, and window visits). Only outdoor/airtight visits are permitted. (rollout of rapid testing will enable indoor visits including contact).

Guidance for clinically 
vulnerable individuals

• Full guidance is available on the government website

Guidance for clinically 
extremely vulnerable 
individuals

• Stay at home as much as possible
  
  
• Work from home where possible (you can still attend work if homeworking is not possible)
  
  
• Further guidance is available on the government website

Attending work and travel  

Going to work

• Employees able to work from home should continue to do so. In cases where homeworking is not possible, you can attend your workplace which should be COVID-secure.

Travel

You should:

• Stay local where possible
• Reduce the number of journeys where possible and walk or cycle where possible or plan ahead and avoid busy times and routes on public transport
• Avoid travelling outside the Tier 3 area you are in other than for essential reasons like work, education, accessing youth services, to meet caring responsibilities or if you are in transit
• Avoid staying overnight in another part of the UK if you live in a Tier 3 area
• Not travel into a Tier 4 area (unless required for work, education, to visit your support bubble, to provide emergency assistance, and to avoid injury or illness, or to escape a risk of harm, to attend hospital, GP and other medical appointments)

View the government’s full guidance on travel 

Face coverings

• You must wear face coverings in all mandated settings.