Originally Posted by
steview111
Not sure why there is confusion. The legislation permits landside and airside connections and doesn’t stipulate that overnight connections aren’t permitted. In this case, the landside connection would’ve been T5 arrivals to T5 departures, unless they were permitted to stay airside.
We have been through this before so I am somewhat cautious of relitigating it, but you are somewhat oversimplifying what the the legislation states. The additional restrictions for catergory 3 arrivals apply unless you fall within an exemption, and transit is one of them. Transit is defined in Schedule 7 as including airside transit, and landside where the person:
enters the United Kingdom for the sole purpose of continuing a journey to a country or territory outside the common travel area and—
(i)remains within their port of entry until their departure from England, or
(ii)travels directly from their port of entry to another port of departure in England.
If you are not exempted then the requirements of Schedule 11 apply - you can't argue that it doesn't stipulate overnight connections aren't permitted as quite simply that is not how it is written, there is no list of exclusions from what is not permitted.
Now I would argue that an overnight connection where you head to your own hotel doesn't fall within either of those. However, we do know that it has been the case with regard to day 2 tests which has an exemption for transit as well, border force have applied a more relaxed policy of allowing you not to have a day 2 booking if doing an overnight connection. I am not so convinced that the same relaxed attitude would apply for red list arrivals and I certainly would advise anyone to rebook if possible to avoid an overnight if coming from a red list.
There is a strong possibility you would have to go to enforced hotel quarantine, and whilst you may be able to leave next day if leaving the country I do not think there is a mechanism to pay anything other than the full 10 day price.