Originally Posted by
Bram
The real benefit would be to business travelers and tourists. A UK resident can cover the 5 days in a long weekend at home, but there will be few visitors coming in if the first part of the trip is 5 days spent staring at a hotel room wall. However, if a business traveler could spend a 5 day break in, say, Dubai, and then come in to the UK and promptly be tested and released, there would definitely be takers, myself included. And if the traveler has been in an epidemiologically safe country during those 5 days (ie one on the travel corridor list), this shouldn't appreciably increase transmission in the UK (it's a different story for the stopover destination).
You could stay at a more upscale AirBnB location w/ith garden and probably for a lower cost too. Your idea seems at the edge of what is permissible, but you would be technically able to do this. You would submit a form indicating you arrived from Dubai but had 9 days of self isolation to run, by listing all the relevant countries. Then after getting the test /test result you upload a new PLF with the relevant information in it. It is possible that someone will pick this up and ask you to re-isolate, but very unlikely. Since you have been transparent, and depending on the wording of the new Statutory Instrument, then I doubt you would face prosecution for doing this. Work on the updated SI hasn't started yet.