Scotland Confirms Further Tightening of Lockdown Restrictions

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced today (January 13) that shops across Scotland will be stopped from offering non-essential ‘click and collect’ services, but rather for essential goods only such as clothes, shoes, baby equipment, books, and homeware.

“I must stress at the outset that the situation we face in relation to the virus remains very precarious and extremely serious,” Sturgeon said, welcoming voluntary decisions made by retailers such as John Lewis to end their own click and collect services in order to drive the number of people leaving their homes downwards.

Similarly, customers will be banned from entering buildings to collect takeaways from food vendors and must instead operate from a hatch or doorway.

The stay at home regulations will also be changed so that if Scottish Police stop you for doing something considered non-essential, you can no longer use an original essential purpose for leaving home as a reasonable excuse.

The First Minister said the wording of the stay at home law will be altered to “close an apparent loophole”, preventing people from leaving and “remaining” outdoors other than for an essential purpose.

Ms Sturgeon said: “We believe that both individually and collectively these additional measures, in further reducing the interactions that allow the virus to spread, will help our essential efforts to suppress it.”

Limits will also be enforced for tradespeople inside the home, which will be for essential purposes only.

Regarding alcohol, from Saturday, it will be against the law in all level 4 areas of Scotland to drink alcohol outdoors in public.