Pubs will require contact details before serving

‘We believe [registers] will be very important for our ability to track back and stop outbreaks happening’

PUB-GOERS and diners will have to register their contact details before entering and will be banned from propping up the bar, Boris Johnson has confirmed.

The measures are among several requirements to allow hospitality firms to reopen safely on July 4, with customers limited to meeting in groups of two households indoors.

Due to a reduction in the two-metre social distancing rule, between 70 and 80 per cent of eligible venues, including cafes and bars, are expected to open next month.

Ministers will now hold talks with hospitality leaders over how companies can record and maintain a log of customers’ contact details, which will be fed into the Government’s test-andtrace system should a patron fall ill with Covid-19.

A similar system has been up and running for several weeks in New Zealand, where personal details are kept on file for four weeks.

Industry sources believe the change will cause minimal disruption for restaurants and hotels, which often take bookings in advance, with a number of pub chains confirming they will implement pre-booking systems.

Others are likely to run a register on the door to take account of walk-ins, as well as setting up supermarket-style queues outside to limit capacity.

Customers will not be asked to present identification for the purposes of registering, as required in other countries, The Daily Telegraph understands.

Mr Johnson told MPS that the public should “take advantage of the freedom that they are rightly reacquiring”, although he urged them to behave re- sponsibly.

“There’s hardly any area of the country that I don’t intend to visit in the course of the reopening of the pubs and hostelries of this country,” he added.

On the use of registers, he added: “I do think that is something people get and, as far as possible, we want people to do that, we want businesses to comply with that.

“We believe it will be very important for our ability to track back and stop outbreaks happening.”

With a shake-up of planning laws due to be unveiled in new legislation tomorrow, Mr Johnson said the hospitality sector would be able to use its creativity to attract more custom over the summer months.

He added: “I think there’s a massive opportunity now for our pubs with all their inventiveness to think of ways of making their businesses Covid-secure, exploiting outdoor spaces, hitherto unloved, unvalued outdoor spaces that may become havens for tables and chairs … and to use their ingenuity to open up in all the ways that they can.”

Under the new “one metre plus” rule, tables in pubs and restaurants will

be spaced at least that distance apart and will be reconfigured to reduce face-to-face contact. Partitions, Perspex screens, hand sanitiser and disposable menus will also be rolled out.

Table service only will be offered indoors, with customers discouraged from returning their glasses to the bar.

A number of pub chains said they would follow Wetherspoons in rolling out a smartphone app for people to place orders.

Both Wetherspoons and Mcmullen’s said their staff would also be subject to temperature and other health checks, with the former requiring those pouring drinks only to handle the bottom of glasses.

Greene King, the brewer, said it would begin introducing “pub hosts”, who will be in charge of managing queues at the entrance of pubs and showing them to tables.

In restaurants, cutlery and napkins will be brought out with the food rather than being pre-laid, with sauces and condiments served in sachets on request.

Waiters and bar staff will be asked to wipe down commonly touched areas and to collect plates and glasses from tables more frequently. New rules on indoor contact will also apply for hospitality firms, with only two households permitted to dine or drink together inside restaurants and pubs.

However, in beer gardens and outdoor seating areas, the existing limit of six people from up to six households will apply.

Contactless card payments will be encouraged.

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of trade body Ukhospitality, said: “Having confirmation of the reopening date is a real boon and affords businesses some time to make the necessary preparations.”