Yesterday the First Minister updated the Scottish parliament with an assessment of the current course of the pandemic in Scotland. In the update, the First Minister outlined a gradual increase in daily cases over the past few weeks, from just over 2,500 a day to approximately 3,000 a day. Several European countries are experiencing a sharp increase in cases and although current mitigations in Scotland are helping tackle the pandemic, the need for continued caution was emphasised – in particular as we enter winter period when there are additional pressures on the NHS.
The latest update from the First Minister reinforces the need for us all to remain cautious. This is in line with the approach we have taken in our recent review of safety measures and court guidance which was announced on 5 November. We continue to make the safety of all those who use our buildings our top priority.
Unless public health guidance determines otherwise we will maintain the current safety measures until the end of January 2022, when a further review will be carried out, taking into account the public health advice at that point.
Continuing Current Safety Measures
- We encourage everyone to respect personal space and maintain at least 1m physical distancing in all our buildings.
- We continue to encourage good hand hygiene, maintain enhanced surface cleaning – especially of high touch-point areas – and maintain good ventilation.
- The legal requirement for face coverings to be worn in our buildings will continue and the guidance for face coverings in the court room will remain in place.
- Our “Safe2Go” contact system will continue to require all those accessing our buildings to check-in and check-out using the system.
- In order to ensure that we can manage overall footfall and conduct the highest levels of business in a safe environment, general public access to our buildings will continue to be restricted and public counters will remain closed.
- We continue to support home working arrangements where possible
Following public health advice
Guidance for court and tribunal users who need to come to our buildings is in place and in addition we ask everyone who uses our buildings to follow the Scottish Government’s public health advice to support safety:
To stay safe you should:
- get the vaccine when you are offered it
- wear a face covering where required
- wash your hands regularly, and cover your nose and mouth if coughing or sneezing
- self isolate and take a PCR test if you have symptoms
- take regular tests if you don’t have symptoms to reduce the risk of spreading the virus – you should do this at least twice per week
- meet outside if you can, and open windows when indoors
- keep your distance from people not in your group
- work from home if you can, or do a mixture of home and office working if possible
- use the apps: COVID status (vaccine passport), Protect Scotland and Check-in Scotland
Eric McQueen, Chief Executive of SCTS said:
“What is clear is that there is a need to continue to do all we can to keep ourselves, our colleagues and all who use our buildings safe.
"We have robust measures in place to maintain both safety and the throughput of business and throughout the pandemic we have taken a safety-first approach to our business – we will continue to do so.
"I would like to thank everyone for their continued help and support and ask that we all remain vigilant to ensure we can all be safe when using our buildings.”