Quarantine when entering, or returning to, the UK in relation to SSP

Guidance provided on gov.uk stipulates that residents or visitors travelling to the UK on, or after, 8 June 2020, must disclose their journey and contact details and must also remain in the place that they are staying, for the first 14 days that they are in the UK.

To disclose journey and contact details, individuals must complete a form, which cannot be submitted until 48 hours before they are due to arrive in the UK.

Once the rules are implemented, in England, individuals could be fined £100 for refusal to provide contact details and £1,000 for refusal to self-isolate, and could potentially face further action. The enforcement measures may differ in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but further detail is not available at this point.

Anybody travelling to the UK prior to 8 June does not need to adhere to these requirements, but they are advised to check the latest public health advice on coronavirus before travel, or if they have just arrived in the UK.

Anybody travelling from Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man does not need to self-isolate or provide journey and contact details if they were there for 14 days or more.

There is a reminder to everyone not to travel if they are experiencing symptoms of coronavirus.

Due to the inclusion of the term ‘self-isolate’, HMRC have been approached to query whether this would become a reason for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) incapacity, and have been told that, were a person to be subject to quarantine (even if it is referred to as self-isolation), then they would not be eligible for SSP. This would be due to the fact that they wouldn’t have been advised by the NHS or other health authority to do so, and the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) have no intentions to extend SSP to cover this scenario