Restaurants Will Now Be Ordered to Take Customer Details for COVID-19 Tracing [Updated]

Groups of more than six can’t meet, but restaurants can have more than six people in them

Health secretary Matt Hancock took a break from blaming the public’s following his government’s advice on taking tests, eating out to help out, and getting back to work for a rise in coronavirus cases to announce that restaurants will now be obliged to take customers’ details for track-and-trace. He told the Today Programme that the measure, which was announced as optional in earlier restaurant reopening guidelines, will be obligatory from Monday 14 September, when a new ban on gatherings of more than six people comes into force. Restaurants, therefore, will see table sizes limited — but not total dining room capacities, at least not any further than they already are limited by social distancing regulations.

At a Downing Street press conference this evening, 9 September, Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed the measures, together with announcing that “fines will be levied against hospitality venues that fail to ensure their premises remain Covid-secure.” With many restaurants already following the track and trace guideline, the government’s official Covid-secure guidance for restaurants published as recommendatory, and a characteristic lack of detail from the Prime Minister today, it’s tough to say yet what impact it will actually have on both business and tracing itself. [BBC News]

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