15 December 2021
The First Minister has today updated Holyrood on the measures the Scottish Government will be immediately taking to combat the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid. She announced the Government would:
- Encourage social mixing to be limited indoors to no more than three households – this would be through guidance, not regulation
- Introduce regulations to require businesses to control crowding. The First Minister said:
- “For example in retail, it will involve a return to the kind of protections in place at the start of the pandemic for example measures to avoid crowding and bottlenecks. This will include physical distancing, measures to control the flow of customers and protective screens."
- “ For hospitality, measures to avoid crowding at bars and between tables, a reminder of the requirement to collect contact details of customers."
- Reintroduce the legal duty that staff who can work from home should:
- "To employers generally: for staff working from home at the start of the pandemic, it's a legal duty to do so again”
- Strengthen the rules on face coverings.
Andrew Goodacre, CEO, has said: “Independent retail will support these measures as we care about our staff and our customers – we have always done this. However, the Scottish government (and the other devolved governments) have to realise that this is becoming lockdown by stealth with no financial support being made available. Retailers will miss out yet again on the busiest trading period, will do all they can to help the government but receive nothing in terms of government support in return. This is wrong and must be addressed, the easiest way is a review of the recently announced business rates for next year which must be lowered .”
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