Travel restrictions: All UK Covid rules likely to end by Easter holidays, including passenger locato

Travel restrictions: All UK Covid rules likely to end by Easter holidays, including passenger locato

Travellers entering the UK could no longer face any restrictions from as soon as next week, under new plans being discussed by the government.

A decision on scrapping all Covid border measures, including the passenger locator form, could be made within days, according to reports.

Currently, unvaccinated UK arrivals over the age of 18 must self-isolate until they have received a negative result from an antigen test taken within the first two days of arrival.

While all travellers, regardless of vaccination status, must fill out a recently simplified digital passenger locator form, within the 48 hours prior to arrival in the UK.

Hopes are now growing that the online questionnaire could be scrapped, along with all other UK Covid entry requirements in time for the Easter holidays.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who previously blasted the form as “ridiculously complicated”, is pushing for the requirement to be dropped by the beginning of April, i understands.

Meanwhile, Transport Select Committee chair Huw Merriman told a Business Travel Association conference last week: “I’m pretty confident we’ll get [the form] dropped by Easter.

“We don’t need all these questions domestically. Why have we all these questions for international travel?”, Travel Weekly reports.

Paul Charles, a key spokesperson for the travel industry, tweeted on Tuesday that he expected the passenger locator form to be removed by 18 March.

Airline and travel industry groups are united in calls to end remaining restrictions.

Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair told the Daily Mail on Wednesday: “It’s a shambles. They should ditch it, it’s completely irrelevant. Nobody collects them, nobody checks them or follows up on them.

“They were designed to pretend that the politicians were doing something to protect people.”

While the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) has called for “further changes to make the system easier to use for all travellers”.

What are the current rules for the passenger locator form?

All UK arrivals must continue to fill out a passenger locator form, with the Government saying it helps it to differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers.

It must be completed at any time in the 48 hours before arriving in the UK.

Passengers travelling from within the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man do not to fill one out.

You can find the form on the Government website here – it’s free to submit one, and there is detailed guidance on what to do.

Passengers will be required to provide:

Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said that the form is a “deterrent to travel”, adding: “Ministers are absolutely right to remove remaining restrictions but this needs to cut across all elements of the economy, including travel.”

Stewart Wingate, Gatwick Airport CEO, has been asking the government to remove all remaining restrictions, including the passenger locator form, since September last year.

He said: “The rebounding of international connectivity toward pre-pandemic levels will boost job and business opportunities, which is great news for many in our local communities and beyond.

“However, fully restoring consumer confidence will take time and I urge Government to make 2022 the year when all travel restrictions are removed completely, including the unpopular passenger locator form.”

Testing firms, which stand to lose out massively by an end to testing, were quick to warn of the dangers of removing day two testing and recommended the government introduce “random testing” at the border.

Professor Denis Kinane, immunologist and founder of Cignpost Diagnostics said: “Easing travel restrictions will certainly be welcome news for the travel industry and is part of a wider move towards learning to live with Covid.

“However, there is one area that I think is very concerning and that is around dropping testing for unvaccinated passengers. I also think we have to find some way to continue to test for Covid at our borders: one option could be random testing for a small proportion of those travelling to the UK.”

Ireland dropped all its entry requirements on Sunday 6 March, including the passenger locator form.

Belgium will scrap its form on Friday 11 March and Greece is to follow suit on Tuesday 15 March.