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Here is the UK quarantine form that you need to fill in from tomorrow

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From tomorrow, all arrivals into the UK must complete a 14-day quarantine.  We thought you might be interested to see the form that all that incoming travellers, including UK residents, must complete.

If you are travelling to the UK you must now complete the ‘public health passenger locator form’ in order to comply with the 14 day quarantine regulations. You may face a £100 fine or be refused entry if you do not.

The Government website makes it clear that you should complete the form before you travel but, oddly, no earlier than 48 hours before your travel.  Each adult must complete their own form.

The form and government guidance went live on Friday in order to allow passengers arriving from tomorrow to complete the required paperwork. You can see the form on this page of the GOV.UK site here.

You’ll need the following details to complete the public health passenger locator form:

  • passport
  • name of the airline, train or ferry company
  • tour company (if travelling with a tour group)
  • booking reference
  • arrival airport, station or port
  • arrival date
  • flight, train or bus number
  • quarantining address
  • emergency contact

Failure to isolate for the full 14 days could result in a £1000 fine.  If you are fined multiple times, the fines will increase each time to a maximum of £3200.

Only a small percentage of people will be checked, and the checks will be carried out by ringing your mobile phone – not in person – to ask where you are.  On this basis, it seems very unlikely that many fines will be issued.

uk quarantine form to complete

Everyone who is arriving from outside Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man must complete the form.  In theory there is no sneaky way to enter the country via Ireland and avoid completing the form and quarantining as was speculated in some quarters.  However, as entrants from Ireland do not pass through Border Control, it is unclear how this is enforced.

“You will also need to complete a public health passenger locator form if you are travelling from the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man and have been outside the Common Travel Area in the last 14 days.”

The guidance suggests going straight the place where you will self-isolate, although it does allow people who have had a long journey to break it up by stopping in safe accommodation. In such circumstances you must also provide the intermediary address when completing the form.

A lot of people are exempted from the mandatory isolation period. Diplomats, defence personnel and variety of key workers for the rail, air, ferry and agricultural industry do not have to do so. You can see the list of exempted individuals here.

You will note that there is one exception for:

“Workers with specialist technical skills for essential or emergency works or services (including commissioning, maintenance, and repairs and safety checks) to ensure the continued production, supply, movement, manufacture, storage or preservation of goods”

….. which seems to have substantial scope.

There is also an exemption for people who live in one country and work in another, and commute between the two at least once a week.

Weirdly, according to 9(a) of the Statutory Instrument, you are permitted to leave the UK even if you have not completed the 14-day isolation period. At that point you are someone else’s problem!

9. During the period of their self-isolation, P may not leave or be outside of, the place where P is self-isolating except—

(a) to travel in order to leave England, provided that they do so directly

The Statutory Instrument is the legal framework which will be used to enforce the rules, whilst the government guidance on GOV.UK is simply the customer-friendly version. If you have some spare time to kill and enjoy the prospect of reading a legal document you can do so here.

Comments (158)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Shaya says:

    Paul Charles, co-leader of the campaign and chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, said: “There are more holes than in a sieve in this unworkable, poorly-thought and economically damaging Government policy.”

    He pointed out that he would be able to take an essential trip to Nice, or Rome, for example, from London Heathrow, spend a week abroad before returning to an airport in Scotland, where the law is not in place, and hire a car and drive back to London without needing to quarantine. Does this make sense?????

    • pauldb says:

      If you read the SI, you are still obliged to provide the information and to self-isolate, if you enter England from Scotland/Wales/NI having been outside the CTA in the prior 14 days.

      If UK Border Force make this clear at EDI and GLA and provide the English form to those England-bound (if Scotland doesn’t have its own SI in place) you’d better come up with a creative defence.

  • Tim M says:

    Maximising inconvenience in the UK for travellers is a decades-long trend, unfortunately. Once upon a time we were “advised” (!) to arrive at the airport at least an hour before. For business class domestic it was 20 minutes.

    Since airports were just airports, they have massively expanded into retail holding areas with an enforced long walk through duty free shops, supported every measure to relieve travellers of their food and drinks upon arrival in the name of security and created unbearable queues so that they can sell ‘fast track’ which is still a fraction of the speed of ‘normal’ as it used to be. No doubt they will seek to use the Covid regulations as yet another commercial opportunity to try to recoup their ‘losses’.

    Perhaps if the airport owners stopped building shopping centres, at great expense, and instead concentrated on building minimalist, traveller-friendly, practical airports, they would not have to extort so much.

    I do not wish them well. I would like them to go bust and be wiped away by a new generation of passenger-focussed airports where I can once again arrive 20 minutes before a flight and be treated as a human being.

    • Chris Heyes says:

      Tim M@ I ALWAYS still arrive 30min before a flight, suitcases go in night before walk through security wait for my Partner to be “Frisked” after setting alarm off lol (hip replacement)
      Although we can see massive crowds at the other security gates never been more than two in front of us in fact usually only us and maybe a pilot
      only time we don’t is on the very rare occasions we visit the lounge
      Coming back home is the nightmare lol won’t let us put suitcases in night before ect

    • Andrew Taylor says:

      Exactly. Well said.

  • MAY L LIM says:

    (a) to travel in order to leave England, provided that they do so directly

    So if you leave to travel to Scotland or Wales or NI directly, you won’t need to complete 14 days quarantine. Is that right?

  • Roberto says:

    As a vegetable grower I may have to go to mainland EU and return both my wife and my self have to work on harvesting and grading lines can We move across my farms but isolate in my farm house at night.ps our produce is found in most supermarkets.

  • Colin JE says:

    Quarantine rules also apply to Scotland and are broadly similar, except the fine is £480. Above £500 it has to be reported to the Procurator Fiscal. But persistent offenders can have a max of £5k fine.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52957776
    This leaves me a bit confused with what happens if I was to fly into Heathrow, stay overnight at a hotel (allowed?), then fly home to Scotland.

    • Rob says:

      Have you read the newspapers today? Border Force has no way of checking that the address or telephone number you give on the form is accurate ….

    • James says:

      Fake news – Fixed penalties for the main coronavirus regulations in Scotland are up to £960, so that is not why, and there is no chance the PF will become involved.

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