Brighton leader calls for ‘local lockdown’ powers after people flock to beaches

Brighton and Hove City Council Leader Nancy Platts has called on the Government to allow local authorities to implement a ‘local lockown’ when there is a rise in Covid-19 cases.

It follows a number of pictures emerging over the weekend showing crowds of people gathering on Brighton and Hove’s seafront and beaches.

Claudia Connell@Claudiacc

Brighton beach and no public loos open. Surprised the sea hasn’t turned green

 

 

Councillor Nancy Platts said:

“When skies are clear blue and temperatures are in the mid 20’s, it’s normally the time when Brighton & Hove loves to welcome visitors from around the world.

“But we are still nowhere near being back in normal times.

“Despite lockdown measures being eased meaning people can travel to spend time at their favourite places to visit, we’re worried that the impact of this on popular visitor destinations like Brighton & Hove hasn’t been fully thought through.”

The Council leader said the behaviour also potentially puts people’s safety at risk and could undo all the work that was achieved during locdown.

Stewards who were in place at key points of the seafront were turning some people away in areas that were becoming too crowded.

On top of the issues surrounding social distancing, alcohol abuse was another subject that Cllr Nancy Platts brought up in a statement.

She said the authority were doing all it could to make sure seafront bars were not breaking restrictions on the sale of food and drink, but some people still appeared to be drinking more than they could handle.

“Some people have been overdoing it alcohol wise on the seafront and behaviour has become unpleasant and dangerous.”

“We think the people who are overdoing it, and who are drinking heavily, may be bringing their own alcohol to the beach.

“Please don’t put pressure on our already stretched emergency services by drinking too much and needing medical attention.”

Brighton & Hove City Council✔@BrightonHoveCC

We're worried that too many people are on the seafront making it hard to maintain safe physical distancing.

We're also hearing that some people are not using the public toilets. It's not nice...

For the time being please stay away from Brighton & Hove.

570

12:57 - 31 May 2020

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Nancy Platts added that she is also upset to hear that some people cannot safely visit their local park or beach because of the amount of people.

She underlined the need for more powers to implement a ‘local lockdown’ if there was a rise in Covid-19 cases:

“It’s incredibly upsetting to hear from people who live in the city, many of whom have no garden or balcony, that they can’t go to their local park or the seafront because they feel unsafe.

“We need more powers from central government to be able to call and implement a local lockdown if we see cases of Covid-19 increase in the city.

“At the moment this is still being discussed in Whitehall but to be able to act quickly we need to be able to undertake the actions we feel best protect the people who live here and the NHS staff and key workers who work here.

“We need to hear from Government on this as a matter of urgency.

“For the time being we ask for the continued support and co-operation of the general public to help protect our city.”