Coronavirus fine chaos: over 650 households dodge quarantine sanction

Over 650 households who were ordered to self-isolate after returning to the UK from abroad managed to avoid the financial punishment. According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC),

440 houses did not answer their door when officers arrived at the address. Under quarantine regulations, the officers returned to the addresses but did not take the cases further. The

information was instead passed on to public health and border force officials. At 240 addresses visited by the police, nobody who lived in the household had the name on the contact form

taken on arrival in the UK. The NPCC said no further enforcement action could be taken after travellers gave a wrong address. Only 38 fines of £1,000 for breaching the 14-day quarantine

rules had been issued by police forces since June. Yvette Cooper, chair of the home affairs committee, said the figures showed “huge gaps” in the enforcement system. She said: "There

clearly isn't any robust enforcement system. "That is very bad for public health and also very frustrating for all the people who are doing the right thing and abiding by the

quarantine rules." READ MORE: CORONAVIRUS CASES: ARE CASES DOUBLING? PROF WHITTY REVEALS UPDATES While 218 were found to be breaching the isolation rules. But no further action was

taken on those people breaching the rules as police had “successfully encouraged them to self-isolate”, according to the NPCC. Martin Hewitt, the NPCC chairman, said the enforcement system

for monitoring returning travellers was “never designed to be 100 percent” or “foolproof”. Mr Hewitt explained that police forces do not have the capacity to engage in hunts for people

breaching the regulations, particularly as crime in the UK has returned back to pre-COVID levels. He said: "If you arrive at an address and, after a couple of visits, there is no

answer, it might be people are out or that the address given was not right. "Our responsibility is to do that check and deal with that individual. “If we are unable to get the answer,

we feed that back into the triage centre run by UK border force. That is their responsibility." The NPCC also said that only roughly half of about 19,000 coronavirus fixed penalty

notices had been paid on time meaning more Britons face prosecutions. This has added to pressure on courts as delays of trails has already led to a 500,000 backlog in cases. Mr Hewitt has

predicted that the number of fines will rise with more regulations and local lockdowns being enforced.