We want to get crowds back as soon as possible

ANOTHER week, another step closer to normality.

We’ve already had fans back atwembley – including for today’s Carabao Cup Final – and taking their seats in the Crucible for the snooker. But this week our pilots programme really begins to ramp up.

On Friday and Saturday,

6,000 clubbers will take over the Bramley-moore Dock warehouse in Liverpool for the first nightclub event in more than a year.

It will be hosted by legendary club night Circus, and punters will be treated to a line-up so world-class that even I’ve heard of the headliner, Fatboy Slim.

They will dance to the Blessed Madonna, Svenväth and others – without face masks, and with a drink in their hand.

These pilots aren’t a loosening of restrictions for fun. Nor are they political or about putting one industry or event above another.they are one-off events in the name of science, so that we can secure the return of normal life in full.

The First Dance club night is one of several pilots the Government is putting on to test the safe return of mass events.

Each event will monitor the risk of Covid transmission in a different setting – indoor and out, crowds mixing and not.

Our ultimate aim is to work out how we can get crowds back safely as soon as possible, and get back to the way things were before the pandemic. A fortnight into the Events Research Programme, we’re already learning a lot.the FA Cup semi-final atwembley last weekend went very smoothly, with plenty of capacity at the testing centre. Every attendee of each pilot – including government ministers like my colleague, sports minister Nigel Huddleston – has to go through the same process: signing a consent form, providing proof of a negative Covid test.

Together, we are all willing participants in one of the largest live studies of coronavirus that has ever taken place.

We’ve conducted a range of interviews with attendees – asking them what it was like to be back in a crowd, how safe they felt, and if they had any other issues. At the nightclub event we’ll take things to the next level.there will be no social distancing. Attendees will be able to mix freely, dancing shoulder to shoulder, and be able to enjoy food and alcohol indoors.they’ll be clubbing for a good cause.

But they will be under close surveillance. Chriswhitty and Jonathanvan-tam will not be standing on the edge of the dancefloor in their white coats, but scientists will be monitoring the action with interest – analysing the CO2 levels in the room to check ventilation and observing crowd movement to see how close people get in different environments.

It will provide a vital insight to clubbing in the Covid era – helping us reopen an industry that has been dealt a body blow by the pandemic.

At the same time, the rest of the pilots are picking up steam.

The Crucible is increasing crowd levels at the Snooker World Championships from a third of the venue’s capacity to 50 per cent – with aims for a full house for the final.

Meanwhile, the Brit awards has joined the programme.

The music festival pilot at Sefton Park has sold out and we’ve also got the first business event in a year onwednesday, at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena.

Each and every pilot gets us closer to normal life.

They show us how we can exit this thing safely – and leave Covid in the rear view mirror once and for all.

‘We’re taking it to the next level’