The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
True extent of Covid breaches is revealed
Covid lockdown breaches in Tayside and Fife during the second wave of the pandemic have been revealed.
Police were given a variety of excuses for large numbers of house gatherings, as well as for breaching travel ban rules at the start of this year.
This included one man who said he had travelled to Perth and Kinross after having a “spiritual awakening”.
Other breaches included a 20-person garden party in Fife, complete with an inflatable pub.
Details of the rulebreaking were revealed in internal Police Scotland reports obtained under Freedom of Information legislation.
Anecdotal reports of significant events were shared in weekly reports on Operation Talla – the force’s response to the coronavirus crisis.
Police Scotland said the papers provided Assistant Chief Constable Graham Spiers with an ongoing assessment of the “demand posed by house gatherings” as well as the “usage of, and compliance with, guidance and legislation”.
The data covers the period between January and April 26, in which Nicola Sturgeon introduced another tough lockdown.
Breaches in the first weeks of the second lockdown included:
An ongoing party and barbecue reported on January 9 in Tayside, with 13 fixed penalty fines issued;
A house party in Fife where 12 people were found to be in attendance, and the homeowner claimed to have Covid-19 symptoms; Reports of a man and woman travelling to and from Dundee on January 23 because the woman required transport from Manchester to look after her nine-year-old child.
Between January and April, Dundee accounted for the most lockdown breaches in Tayside.
Officers in the city responded to 121 gatherings in January, compared to 58 in Perth and Kinross and 55 in Angus.
A total of 263 illegal gatherings were recorded in February, which included 150 in Dundee and 69 in Angus.
In Fife, officers responded to the most illegal gatherings in January, with 180 incidents recorded.
That figure fell to 125 in February and 113 in March. Seventy-three illegal gatherings were recorded in Fife in April.
One incident in the kingdom on March 12 saw officers respond to reports of a loud party.
After arriving at the address they found around 20 people within an inflatable pub in the back garden. The incident saw the homeowner charged.
The following day in Tayside, officers on patrol found two people near Pitlochry who had travelled to the area in a campervan.
After being found not to have a reasonable excuse, the pair were issued with a fixed penalty notice.
Another incident in Fife later in March saw four occupants tell police they were home alone.
Despite the assurances, officers actually found 12 people hiding in the garden shed.
On March 20, wild campers found at Loch Rannoch in Perthshire said they had travelled to the beauty spot from outwith the local area for a celebration.
On the same day in Dundee, officers attended a “rave” at the Law, with a woman arrested and charged as a result of the gathering.
Across Scotland a total of 11,383 fines had been issued and 1,431 arrests made as of April 26.
This included 115 arrests across Tayside and Fife divisions, and a further 776 fixed penalty notices issued.
But even as some hospitality rules relax, some have pointed to the early closing times for pubs as a potential driver of house gatherings.
Nightclubs remain closed despite the lifting of some of the rules for pubs and restaurants.