Pubs in Reading under Covid-19 scrutiny
Inspections are being carried out at pubs and restaurants across Reading to make sure staff are keeping a record of customers’ names and addresses for the NHS Test and Trace programme.
People are also being encouraged to report businesses to Reading Borough Council if they are failing to collect customers’ contact information.
Tom Lake, governor for Reading at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, suggested record keeping at Reading town centre venues had “become lax”, during a meeting of Reading Borough Council’s Covid-19 Outbreak Engagement Board on September 4.
He asked if the council could work with businesses to improve their record keeping and “increase conformity” with the government guidance.
Cllr Graeme Hoskin, lead councillor for health, said: “We have established a dedicated team made up of environmental health officers and officers from regulatory services to proactively inspect premises and work with owners to ensure all areas of their operations are Covid secure.
“This includes, but is not limited to, complying with the test and trace record keeping and face covering requirements.
“We’ve also written to all businesses in Reading outlining requirements for being Covid secure and have established a reporting phone number and email address for members of the public to report to the council any establishments where they have concerns about Covid practices.”
Pubs, cafes and restaurants in England have been told to collect and keep this contact information for 21 days, so anyone who may have been in contact with coronavirus at a certain venue can be alerted.
Customers do not have to provide this information, as the scheme is voluntary, but the government says it can contain outbreaks and “reduce the risk of needing local lockdowns”.
David Munday, public health consultant, said some pubs in Reading had been “really tight on obtaining customer contact information” but others had not.
He added: “If through contract tracing it’s identified that a number of people who have tested positive report they have been at a certain pub, we would be able to, if necessary, close down that pub.
“That would be until we were happy that cleaning had happened, and operations were in an appropriate way to reopen.”
During the pandemic, 877 people have tested positive for coronavirus in Reading and, according to the office for National Statistics, 166 people have lost their lives to the virus in the town.
The figures show 85 of those deaths occurred in hospitals and 65 died in care homes.