Portsmouth social distancing: People reminded to follow lockdown rules as crowds flock to Southsea seafront

The promenade was busy with large numbers of people, making it difficult to maintain social distancing and food outlets and ice cream parlours had large queues of people causing congestion pinch-points at already busy areas such as South Parade Pier.

Seafront car parks were also busy, raising concerns that not everyone was following lockdown regulations to exercise locally.

While current lockdown rules allow people to leave their homes to exercise, the leader of Portsmouth City Council Gerald Vernon-Jackson feels that people ‘need to be sensible and think very carefully about what they do’.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson said: ‘Despite the nice weather I didn’t go down to the seafront. My other half is shielding and we need to be very careful. While Public Health England say it’s much more difficult to catch the virus outside people still need to be careful.’

While many families were at the seafront there were also small gatherings of people of similar age.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson added: ‘The rules say you should not be meeting more than one other person outside your household for exercise. Those are the rules and people must follow them.

‘People shouldn’t be meeting several other people outside.’

Last month the council commissioned a drone to gather footage to monitor social distancing and have used the images to put measures in place.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson said: ‘We identified three pinch-points at South Parade Pier, Southsea Beach Cafe and the Coffee Cup at Eastney. In these areas you have people queuing and so we have removed the benches around these places to encourage people to move on and not to loiter.’

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With the city’s seven-day infection rate ‘having halved’ in recent weeks, the council leader wants people to take personal responsibility to help ensure this trend continues.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson added: ‘Last night our infection rate went under 300 per 100,000 people for the first time in several weeks. It would be a shame if people started to relax and the good work was undone.

‘Even if the vaccine programme is going well the virus is still prevalent in society and we need to do what we can to prevent people from getting it.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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