FAQs: National Restrictions

You must not leave or be outside of your home or garden except where you have a ‘reasonable excuse’. A reasonable excuse includes:

Work - you can only leave home for work purposes where it is unreasonable for you to do your job from home, including but not limited to people who work within critical national infrastructure, construction or manufacturing that require in-person attendance

Volunteering - you can also leave home to provide voluntary or charitable services.

Essential activities - you can leave home to buy things at shops or obtain services. You may also leave your home to do these things on behalf of a disabled or vulnerable person or someone self-isolating.

Education and childcare - You can only leave home for education, registered childcare, and supervised activities for children where they are eligible to attend. Access to education and children’s activities for school-aged pupils is restricted. See further information on education and childcare. People can continue existing arrangements for contact between parents and children where they live apart. This includes childcare bubbles.

Meeting others and care - You can leave home to visit people in your support bubble ( if you are legally permitted to form one), to provide informal childcare for children under 14 as part of a childcare bubble (for example, to enable parents to work, and not to enable social contact between adults), to provide care for disabled or vulnerable people, to provide emergency assistance, to attend a support group (of up to 15 people), or for respite care where that care is being provided to a vulnerable person or a person with a disability, or is a short break in respect of a looked-after child.

Exercise You can continue to exercise alone, with one other person or with your household or support bubble. This should be limited to once per day, and you should not travel outside your local area. You should maintain social distancing.

Medical reasons - You can leave home for a medical reason, including to get a COVID-19 test, for medical appointments and emergencies.

Harm and compassionate visits - you can leave home to be with someone who is giving birth, to avoid injury or illness or to escape risk of harm (such as domestic abuse). You can also leave home to visit someone who is dying or someone in a care home (if permitted under care home guidance ), hospice, or hospital, or to accompany them to a medical appointment.

Animal welfare reasons – you can leave home for animal welfare reasons, such as to attend veterinary services for advice or treatment.

Communal worship and life events - You can leave home to attend or visit a place of worship for communal worship, a funeral or event related to a death, a burial ground or a remembrance garden, or to attend a wedding ceremony. You should follow the guidance on the safe use of places of worship and must not mingle with anyone outside of your household or support bubble when attending a place of worship. Weddings, funerals and religious, belief-based or commemorative events linked to someone’s death are all subject to limits on the numbers that can attend, and weddings and civil ceremonies may only take place in exceptional circumstances.

There are further reasonable excuses. For example, you may leave home to fulfil legal obligations or to carry out activities related to buying, selling, letting or renting a residential property, or where it is reasonably necessary for voting in an election or referendum.

A support bubble is a close support network between a household with only one adult in the home (known as a single-adult household) and one other household of any size.

You should not change who is in your bubble. Find out more information on support bubbles.

A review of the National Restrictions will take place in mid-February.

Hospitality venues like restaurants, bars and pubs must close, but can still provide takeaway and delivery services. However, takeaway of alcohol is not permitted.

To reduce social contact, the Government has ordered certain businesses and venues to close. These include:

• All non-essential retail, including, but not limited to clothing and electronics stores, vehicle showrooms, travel agents, betting shops, auction houses, tailors, car washes, tobacco and vape shops.
• Indoor and outdoor leisure facilities such as bowling alleys, leisure centres and gyms, sports facilities including swimming pools, golf courses and driving ranges, dance studios, stables and riding centres, soft play facilities, climbing walls and climbing centres, archery and shooting ranges, water and theme parks,
• Entertainment venues such as theatres, concert halls, cinemas, museums and galleries, casinos, adult gaming centres and arcades, bingo halls, bowling alleys, concert halls, zoos and other animal attractions, botanical gardens;
• Personal care facilities such as hair, beauty and nail salons, tattoo parlours, spas, massage parlours, body and skin piercing services, non-medical acupuncture, and tanning salons.

Food shops, supermarkets, pharmacies, garden centres, building merchants, bicycle shops and certain other retailers providing essential goods and services can remain open. Essential retail should follow COVID-secure guidelines to protect customers, visitors and workers.

Non-essential retail can remain open for delivery to customers and click-and-collect.

Colleges, primary (reception onwards) and secondary schools will remain open for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. All other children will learn remotely until at least February half term.

Indoor gyms and sports facilities will remain closed. Outdoor sports courts, outdoor gyms, golf courses, outdoor swimming pools, archery/driving/shooting ranges and riding arenas must also close.

Organised outdoor sport for disabled people is allowed to continue.

Weddings, civil partnership ceremonies and funerals are allowed with strict limits on attendance, and must only take place in COVID-19 secure venues or in public outdoor spaces unless in exceptional circumstances.

Funerals can be attended by a maximum of 30 people. Linked religious, belief-based or commemorative events, such as stone settings and ash scatterings can also continue with up to 6 people in attendance. Anyone working is not counted in these limits. Social distancing should be maintained between people who do not live together or share a support bubble.

We can confirm that the vast majority of our services will continue in line with government guidance and keeping to existing COVID-19 compliant practices, but some may be affected. Find out more about our services during National Restrictions.

If you start to experience coronavirus symptoms, it is important that you get a test. Visit www.nhs.uk/coronavirus or call 119 to book a test.

The police can take action against you if you meet in larger groups. This includes breaking up illegal gatherings and issuing fines (fixed penalty notices).

You can be given a Fixed Penalty Notice of £200 for the first offence, doubling for further offences up to a maximum of £6,400. If you hold, or are involved in holding, an illegal gathering of over 30 people, the police can issue fines of £10,000.

REPORT A DOMESTIC BREACH OF COVID-19 GUIDANCE TO SOUTH YORKSHIRE POLICE

For concerns about business compliance email Regulation&Enforcement@doncaster.gov.uk or use the link below:

REPORT A BUSINESS BREACH OF COVID-19 GUIDANCE

Visits to care homes can take place with arrangements such as substantial screens, visiting pods, or behind windows. Close-contact indoor visits are not allowed.

You should check the guidance from your Care Home before visiting.

You must not leave your home unless you have a reasonable excuse. If you need to travel you should stay local - meaning avoiding travelling outside of your village, town or the part of a city where you live - and look to reduce the number of journeys you make overall.

You cannot leave your home or the place where you are living for holidays or overnight stays unless you have a reasonable excuse for doing so. This means that holidays in the UK and abroad are not allowed. This includes staying in a second home or caravan, if that is not your primary residence. This also includes staying with anyone who you don’t live with unless they’re in your support bubble.

You are allowed to stay overnight away from your home if you: Are visiting your support bubble, are unable to return to your main residence, need accommodation while moving house, need accommodation to attend a funeral or related commemorative event, require accommodation for work purposes or to provide voluntary services, are a child requiring accommodation for school or care, are homeless, seeking asylum or a vulnerable person seeking refuge, are an elite athlete or their support staff or parent, if the athlete is under 18 and it is necessary to be outside of the home for training or competition.

Guest accommodation providers such as hotels, B&Bs and caravan parks may remain open for the specific reasons set out in law, including where guests are unable to return to their main residence, use that guest accommodation as their main residence, need accommodation while moving house, are self-isolating as required by law, or would otherwise be made homeless as a result of the accommodation closing.

Accommodation providers are also encouraged to work cooperatively with Local Authorities to provide accommodation to vulnerable groups including the homeless.

Tradespeople can continue to work in homes. However, personal care facilities such as mobile hairdressing cannot be provided.

You can still move home. People outside your household or support bubble should not help with moving house unless absolutely necessary.

Estate and letting agents and removals firms can continue to work. If you are looking to move, you can go to property viewings.

Follow the national guidance on moving home safely, which includes advice on social distancing, letting fresh air in, and wearing a face covering.

The following people can provide childcare support in private homes and gardens:

• registered childcare providers, including nannies
• people in your support bubble
• people in your childcare bubble

A childcare bubble is where someone in one household provides informal (unpaid and unregistered) childcare to a child aged 13 or under in another household. For any given childcare bubble, this must always be between the same 2 households.

Friends or family who do not live with you and are not part of a support or childcare bubble must not visit your home to help with childcare. Childcare bubbles are to be used to provide childcare only, and not for the purposes of different households mixing where they are otherwise not allowed to do so.

Please remember that you can exercise with 1 other person you do not live with (or have formed a support bubble with) in certain outdoor public spaces, such as:

• parks, beaches, countryside, forests
• public gardens (whether or not you pay to enter them), allotments
• outdoor sports courts and facilities, and playgrounds

You can also consider forming a support bubble with one household if your household consists of one adult. A support bubble is where a household with one adult joins with another household. Households in that support bubble can still visit each other, stay overnight, and visit public places together.

Also there are telephone or digital ways to keep in touch with your existing support system or even to make new social connections.

Find out more on mental health and wellbeing.

Those who are clinically extremely vulnerable should not attend work, school, college or university, and limit the time you spend outside the home. You should only go out for medical appointments, exercise or if it is essential.

Further details can be found here COVID-19: guidance on shielding and protecting people defined on medical grounds as extremely vulnerable