HB7

Simon Calder (senior travel writer for The Independent) thinks that hotel quarantine will be dumped by Easter. I think that is way too optimistic, but I hope he is right. He knows much more than me, so hopefully he knows something many of us don't!

CrazyLilBlondie

Our flights are on a saturday and so far the flights have been running on saturdays this whole lockdown to my destination, so it's unlikely they will be cancelled, is a rebooking from April last year for our wedding, just want it done now!

HB7

I don't think we'll know anytime soon. Maybe the PM will mention it tonight, but if he doesn't I hope he is grilled about it from journos.

CrazyLilBlondie

The main difference is its will now be legal to sit down on a park bench/sunbathe. Least my neighbour can stop calling the police for me sunbathing in my communal garden on my own now...

corporate-wage-slave

The overseas travel restrictions were largely hinged on the stay at home statutory instruments. You needed a reasonable excuse to be out of your home, and going to the Madlives is not reasonable. So this aspect of the legislation will change, and I'm sure that the SI will be amended yet again. As a digression, some of the SIs in this space are borderline impossible to understand since the amendments have piled up on each other so much, and I doubt anyone can possibly operate them due to all the changes from the baseline SI. I hope there is a tidying up process at some point. But for 29 March I suspect there will be either an amended SI redefining the stay at home requirements or a new SI. That will probably emerge only shortly before the relevant dates, following recent precedent, and there will be a parliamentary debate on them too.

There are separate set of SIs which cover incoming passengers to the UK, mandating self isolation, managed isolation, pre travel testing, post travel testing, test to release. I guess there is no need to change these, and anyone booking travel should - for the time being - factor in the risk of £1750 cost of managed isolation, along with the £205 testing cost - since we still don't know enough about what the future looks like.

KARFA

I agree, the PM won't be setting out laws today which take effect in over a months time. However, if I were a legal draftsman and wanted to copy and paste it should be noted as well as the stay at home rule Scotland already has specific legal restrictions on leaving and entering Scotland without a reasonable excuse - so it is easily done. Also the reported restriction not to stay away from home overnight will be in play - we had this last year in the law in June.

KSVVZ2015

Thank you. Yes, we are thinking along the same lines and I think the key answer is that we wouldn't really know the new SI for outbound international travel restrictions until closer to the 29th unless the government specifically announces that (which seems unlikely). So seems like we have a few weeks of hoping for something slightly more lenient. I think everyone on this board has accepted it will be summer (and potentially longer) before FCO advice is changed and UK holiday operators are operating foreign holidays. But I remain hopeful March 29 will bring us the ability to leave the country without breaking the law even if its against FCO advise and there are a million hurdles to go through to come back. Happy for anyone to tell me they think that's a pipe dream.

KARFA

This is very unlikely based on what is reported. As noted, it is expected the stay at home will be lifted, but you will not be allowed to be away from home overnight. This is exactly what happened last year as lockdown was gradually lifted.

CrazyLilBlondie

This is what im hoping for. I find the newspaper headlines of "no holidays till august" seem to be more focused on the family package holidays with Tui to Spain with the kids, without quarantine and multiple tests. Where as savvy flexible travelers who are happy to jump through the hoops, afford all the tests and are able to quarantine at home seems to not be the focus of the narative when it comes to "holidays" in the press.

KSVVZ2015

I don't disagree about the rule about no nights away from home. But practically, if someone left the country last June no one would have said boo on departure or at BF on return as I recall. Happy to be corrected.

CrazyLilBlondie

However when we were in the tier system in the autumn/winter, wasn't it the rule that you couldn't stay away from home overnight in the UK, but could still go abroad and stay overnight?

KSVVZ2015

Under Tier 3, yes. Tier 4 then banned international travel but it was unenforced.

paulaf

In light of all this news today we will no longer be rushing to get our vaccines, in fact might even refuse it until I need it for selfish reasons for travel, not worried about the health aspects, we were going to have it as it seemed the right thing to do. Many of my friends in their 50s and 60s now also feel the same, what's the point if your life cannot get back to normal, the most vulnerable are now protected and millions more so by the end of March. Feel free to feed this back to HMG.

KARFA

No it wasn't. Tiers 1-3 had no restrictions on movement or staying away from home. Tier 4 had a stay at home restriction as we now have. If you were living in a tier 4 area you were not allowed to leave home for leisure travel, whether within the UK or abroad.

Hotels in tier 4 [EDIT: and tier 3] areas were only allowed to accommodate guests for a restricted number of reasons like work travel.

See above.

KSVVZ2015

I don't think that is correct.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ions-explained

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information...ockdown-tiers/

This would seem to be consistent with recollection that Tier 3 prohibited overnight stays for non-essential reasons while not imposing a travel ban. Indeed, when we tried to book NYE in Cornwall ~December 12 we were told they were refusing London bookings until they knew whether London would move into Tier 3 that week (which it did, before moving into tier 4 the following weekend) as they wouldn't be allowed to accept Tier 3 resident guests.