Hospitality rules tightened

Settings where face coverings must be legally worn in Scotland is expanding to include certain indoor public places such as cinemas, galleries, museums and banks, from Saturday (8 August).

Further rules for the hospitality sector, including the introduction of new statutory guidance, have been announced to increase compliance and keep the sector safely open.

While the new guidance won’t come into effect until Friday 14 August, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has emphasised that the hospitality industry should already be doing the right thing, and if not then they should start now.

Hospitality premises should be collecting customer contact details for Test and Protect. Tables should be pre-booked where possible, with no queueing. There should be no background music and TVs should be muted to reduce the need for people to shout or lean in to each other, and no more than three households at a time should be meeting in a group.

From Friday (14 August), it will be mandatory to collect contact details of customers in a range of hospitality and public settings.

Face shields may be used but only if they are worn in addition to a face covering. While exemptions to face coverings will apply, the new settings face coverings must now be worn in will include:

• any premises open to members of the public and used for the retail sale or hire of goods or services. This now includes: shops; takeaway restaurants; estate agents; and beauty parlours. This does not extend to hospitality premises such as sit-in cafes and restaurants
• aquariums, indoor zoos or visitor farms, and any other indoor tourist, heritage or cultural site
• banks, building societies and credit unions
• cinemas
• community centres
• crematoriums and funeral directors premises
• libraries and public reading rooms
• museums and galleries
• places of worship
• post offices
• storage and distribution facilities, including collection and drop off points

The First Minister said:

“To say that the incident in Aberdeen is deeply regrettable is an understatement. But it underlines an extremely important point: any time one of us fails to abide by the rules, we put others at risk and give this virus the chance to come roaring back. 

“That’s something which we simply cannot afford to do. We’ve seen – every day of this outbreak – how easily COVID-19 can spread.

“We need to do everything we can to stop it in its tracks and that is why we are expanding the mandatory use of face coverings in more indoor public spaces, and will be implementing further regulations for the hospitality sector. Many of these measures should already be in place as part of the guidance, but in order to keep the sector open – safely – we are now placing them in law.

“We are the frontline in making sure that Covid doesn’t spread, and so we all need to keep doing the right things.”

The Scottish COVID-19 Workbook has also been published today. It brings into one place advice on how local and national public health agencies will provide support to prevent virus spread, together with advice on outbreak management.

Alongside the workbook we will publish ‘Sector Advice Cards’ that details how different sectors can take action to prevent the spread of the virus, avoid outbreaks, reporting and helping to manage outbreaks. The first Sector Advice Card for schools was published today.

Further detail on the mandatory collection of contact information of people in hospitality sectors will be published next week.