Video and pix: Enforcement team carries out Covid spot checks on York pubs

A team from the council has carried out spot checks on York nightspots to see if they were Covid secure.

Officers from City of York Council’s public protection department spent Saturday night (3 October) calling unannounced on city centre pubs and licensed premises.

And while they found “areas of concern”, they praised the majority of premises for their diligence.

Police were also out in numbers to ensure that there was no repeat of the scenes last weekend, when crowds of people were videoed singing and dancing after the 10pm curfew.

At the end of the night people dispersed quickly – encouraged by the torrential rain.

Some issues of concern

The council team were investigating that the pubs were adhering to guidelines designed to keep the public safe. They checked

• QR codes were available for the track and trace app
• social distancing and the ‘rule of six’ were being enforced
• there was access to hand sanitiser and other Covid protection measures.

Chair of the licensing committee Cllr Ashley Mason joined the officers tonight.

By and large he was impressed with the way the trade and customers were behaving.

Where they had found issues of concern particularly on distancing they would follow up with advice and further checks.

“We want to work with the pubs,” he said. “They’ve had a really tough time.

“We want to make sure they’re operating in a safe way, and we want to support them to do that.”

Didn’t want a repeat

Meanwhile North Yorkshire Police revealed they had taken part in a multi-agency meeting to discuss the large gatherings in York seen on social media last weekend.

York City Police said in a statement released late last night: “We all wanted to make sure that we didn’t see a repeat in order to try and keep people safe and stop the spread of the virus.

“I am really pleased to report that the people of York have responded and everyone made their way home at closing time.

“The streets were soon clear of people this evening… maybe PC Rain helped a bit too.”