UK Hospitality update

Today’s briefing came from the Health Secretary Matt Hancock. He was joined by Prof John Newton, coordinator of the national testing effort. The briefing focussed on a health update, testing and the PHE report and investigation into why BAME and some other groups are more at risk from COVID-19.

During the Q+A, George Parker from the FT asked about air bridges to countries with lower COVID-19 rates. Hancock replied that the air bridge work is being done by Home Office and DfT. He also asked about the scientific rationale for having a quarantine for people coming into the UK from countries with low rates of coronavirus, like Greece. Newton said that anyone coming into the country should be treated as an unknown and that would justify quarantine.

 

#Fair4Hospitality Update

Ahead of a House of Lords Debate tomorrow on the economic impact of COVID19, we have briefed Peers on the importance of an early, clear, confirmed 4 July opening date for hospitality and appropriate social distancing regulations to the viability and success of a sector restart. This has provided an opportunity to highlight the work we have done on industry led standards to underpin a safe restart.

The Government will tomorrow introduce the Insolvency Bill to the House of Commons to provide a legal solution and protection against aggressive rent debt enforcement. We have briefed MPs to get confirmation that the protection measures are extended from 30 June to 30 September and to press for government intervention and support on rent.

Tomorrow will also see a debate on the Government’s proposed quarantine proposals, due to be introduced from 8 June. We anticipate that the Government will also release guidance confirm that hotels will be able to accommodate those self-isolating during quarantine and clarifying which workers are also allowed to stay overnight (link here)

 

Government Update

Flexible furlough: the government has published new guidance on the introduction of flexible furlough from 1 July. From that date, workers can be return to work on a part time or reduced hours basis and remain on furlough. The employer will pay the worker in full for the hours worked and the government furlough payment will top this up to their usual pay for the same period. The employer will be free to set any amount of hours or shifts to be worked – including zero hours – on a weekly basis. You can bring back staff full time, part time and put them back onto furlough during the July-Oct period. At the same time the requirement to be furloughed for a minimum of 3 weeks will be removed. The furlough scheme will close to new entrants from 30 June. This means that in order to benefit from part time furlough, a worker must have been on full furlough for a minimum of 3 weeks during the period March-June and it will be important for businesses to review rotas.

 

Industry Update

As part of its investigation into Coronavirus related business interruption insurance, the FCA have provided an update on the legal case currently scheduled to be heard at the High Court for 10 days from mid July. The FCA has reviewed 500 relevant policies from 40 insurers and identified a sample of 17 policy wordings that capture the main issues in dispute. In the meantime, a number of insurers have agreed to settle and change their response to claims. This initial list of insurers and the policy wordings they use is not exhaustive, and we are now inputting into the FCA’s new short consultation on draft guidance asking all insurers to check their policy wordings against those they intend to test to see if theirs will be impacted by the outcome of the case. The FCA expects to publish a list of all the relevant insurers and policies that may have impacted wordings in early July.

VisitBritain has commissioned a weekly tracking survey to understand domestic intent to take short breaks and holidays both within the UK and abroad, with particular focus around the current barriers and concerns around travel and how these will evolve over time. The survey will address: the likelihood of UK residents to travel; when and where they plan to go; specific trip details such as accommodation type and activities undertaken and the type of reassurances they're seeking from the sector. The survey will be repeated across a 13-week period with the first wave results published on 1 June 2020. The survey results will be published weekly on visitbritain.org. Download the report.

 

Travel updates

From tomorrow (3 June), Italy will open its borders without a quarantine requirement to tourists from the EU states, states that are party to the Schengen Agreement, the United Kingdom, Andorra and Monaco.

P&O Cruises has announced an extension to their pause in operations until 15 October 2020.

 

Situation update 2 June 2020

To see the number of cases of COVID-19 in England and the UK visit the UK COVID-19 dashboard - https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

To see the number of cases globally see the World Health Organisation dashboard - https://covid19.who.int/