Scotland tightens restrictions on takeaway and click & collect

Article updated on 14.01.21

Restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars are closed. Sectors guidance is at: sector guidance for tourism and hospitality.

From 00:01 on Saturday 16 January takeaways (and other food and drink businesses) can only provide food or drink for consumption off premises, but they must either deliver to customers or, where the customer collects, operate on a no entry basis for either pre-order or walk-up service.

Hotels and other accommodation providers can still serve food to qualifying guests i.e. keyworkers staying in their premises up to 22:00. Room service, including alcohol, is allowed as normal.

From 00:01 on Saturday 16 January it is against the law to consume alcohol in an outdoors public place in any Level 4 area.

Sector guidance for the hospitality industry can be found here.

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Nicola Sturgeon today (13.01.20) announced tighter restrictions on takeaway and click & collect services.

From now on, only essential items will be available for click and collect.

She said: “For click and collect services that are allowed, staggered appointments will need to be offered to avoid any potential for queuing, and access inside premises for collection will not be permitted.”

The guidance, which is available here, outlines that customers can no longer enter the premises for takeaway orders & collections. However, walk-up orders and pre-orders can be taken and passed to the customer through a doorway or service hatch.

The consumption of alcohol will also be changed, making it against the law in all level four areas of Scotland to drink alcohol outdoors in public.

A full summary

The six new restrictions that Sturgeon announced are outlined below.

1. The availability and operation of click and collect services for retailers will be limited. Only retailers offering essential items will be able to offer click and collect and those who do will need to offer staggered appointments. Customers will also not be able to enter the premises for the purposes of collection.
2. For takeaway services, customers will no longer be able to enter a premises to collect or order food or drink. This will have to be provided at the doorway or through a service hatch or similar.
3. The consumption of alcohol outdoors in public will no longer be allowed in all Level 4 areas.
4. Household mixing outside will be limited to one other person from another household, in groups no bigger than two people.
5. Statutory guidance will be introduced to make clear to employers that they must support employees to work from home wherever possible. If employees were working from home in the lockdown from March last year, they should also be doing so now and employers should be facilitating this.
6. The guidance on work taking place inside people’s homes will be put into law. This means work can only take place in private dwellings if it is essential to the upkeep, functioning or maintenance of the dwelling.

“Case numbers are still so high – and the new variant is so infectious – that we must use be as tough and as effective as we can to stop it spreading”

– Nicola Sturgeon

The law will also be amended to make clear that people can only leave home – and remain outside the home – for essential purposes. This is to avoid people leaving the home for an essential purpose and then carrying out a non-essential activity. However, there will be no time limit on how long someone can remain outside the home.

Sturgeon acknowledged the toughness of these restrictions but said there were some grounds for hope, with early signs showing that lockdown is starting to have an effect. She also noted that the aim was to have the first vaccine doses for all over 80s to be completed by the start of February.

The updated guidance on the changes can be found here.