With the national covid-19 restrictions coming to end on 2nd December 2020, the UK Government have published their amended Covid Winter Plan; this sets out what steps are to be taken to bring some normality to life by Spring 2021.
England will be returning to local tiers divided in to Tier 1- medium alert, Tier 2 – high alert and Tier 3 – very high alert and the Government has provided guidance on what would be permitted within each respective tier under clause 57 of the Winter Plan (WP) see (1) below.
Self-Isolation
Under clause 62 of the (WP), the government has emphasised the need to adhere to certain behaviours so as to limit the spread of the virus to include to self-isolate “if you or another household member has symptoms or tested positive or you have been notified that you been in close contact with someone who has tested positive” and to get tested immediately if you display symptoms and share your contacts to enable effective tracing.
With isolation periods, NHS guidance suggests that if you have symptoms or have tested positive for coronavirus, you'll usually need to self-isolate for at least 10 days. You'll usually need to self-isolate for 14 days if:
1.someone you live with has symptoms or tested positive
2.someone in your support bubble has symptoms or tested positive
3. You've been told to self-isolate by Test and Trace
But NHS guidance goes on to say that “if you think you've been in contact with someone who has coronavirus, but you do not have symptoms and have not been told to self-isolate, continue to follow social distancing advice” -see (2) below.
Working from home
The Government’s (WP) has emphasised that working from home can reduce the transmission of the virus and thus “encourages employers to enable a greater degree of home working, and will strengthen guidance to be very clear that anyone who can work from home should do so” across all 3 tiers- clauses 57 & 63 of (WP).
The Government does accept the fact that on certain occasions home -working may not be practicable, like in construction and manufacturing sectors or where the mental health of the employee may require some office based working. If this is the case the employers need to carry out a covid -risk assessment so as to protect the health, safety and welfare of their staff and customers by adhering to government guidance – see (3) below, so that workplaces as far as reasonably practicable are COVID-secure to include having regard to Hands, Face and Space provisions – see (4) below.
Where businesses are not following guidelines the Government intends to give more powers to Local Authorities to issue improvement and restriction notices together with fines to businesses who are breaching COVID-secure rules extending to powers to immediately close premises that fail to obey the rules. More information on this is to be provided by Government in due course.
Vulnerable
During the current national restrictions, those who were clinically extremely vulnerable were advised by the Government not to go to work or school ( thus parents may have had to take time off work) but that is due to end after the current lockdown restrictions are lifted with the Government reintroducing specific advice for clinically extremely vulnerable people on how they can protect themselves within each tier.
This article concentrates on matters related to England; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland may implement different arrangement for their regions.
The article is intended for general information purposes and should you require any further guidance, please contact our HR/legal advice-line team.
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