People from England won’t be allowed to go on holiday in Wales over Easter

Covid-19 rules will be relaxed to allow Welsh people to stay in self-contained accommodation across Wales – but the rules in England will not permit that until later

People from England won’t be allowed to go on holiday in Wales over Easter, when self-contained accommodation is set to reopen.

First Minister Mark Drakeford said he hoped tourism would be open to people outside of Wales by the summer if the coronavirus situation continued to improve.

“At Easter time, Welsh people will be able to travel for holidays over Easter within Wales, and to self-contained accommodation,” Mr Drakeford told the BBC.

“The rules in England will not permit that. The Prime Minister’s road map says that for the weeks after March 29, people should minimise travel, there are to be no holidays, and people won’t be allowed to stay away from home overnight.

“If it won’t be safe to stay overnight in England, then obviously it would not be safe for people to travel into Wales.”

Wales will move to a “stay local” requirement for at least the next three weeks as the country eases some of its coronavirus restrictions, Mr Drakeford will announce today. The current “stay-at-home” restrictions will be lifted from Saturday and are expected to allow people from rural areas to travel greater distances than those who live in urban towns and cities.

From Saturday, four people from two households will also be able to meet outdoors to socialise, including in gardens – while outdoor sports facilities, including basketball courts, tennis courts and golf courses, can reopen.

Indoor care home visits will also restart for single designated visitors from the weekend.Hairdressers and barbers can reopen for appointments from Monday, the same day that all primary pupils and those in qualifications years can return to schools.

Secondary schools will have the option to bring year 10 and 12 learners back, while there will be “flexibility” to allow all other pupils to “check-in” with teachers on a limited amount of days ahead of a full return after the Easter break.

Non-essential retail, which was considered for reopening from next week, will start to reopen gradually from March 22, while restrictions will be lifted on what can be sold in shops which are currently open.

All shops, including all close contact services, will be able to open from April 12, the same date as in England.Mr Drakeford insisted returning children and young people to face-to-face education is the “top priority” for the Welsh Government.

He told BBC Breakfast that about 40% of children in Wales were back in school, with that figure rising “considerably” from Monday when all primary school pupils and students taking exams in secondary schools will return.

All students in Wales will be back in classrooms on April 12.

“That is the safe way to do it, that is what we have agreed with our teaching unions and local education authorities,” Mr Drakeford said.

“And in the meantime, it does give us a bit of headroom to do some other modest things – the reopening of hairdressers and barbers, the return of visits to care homes, allowing four people from two households to meet more outdoors.

“So that’s a balance we’ve struck in Wales, a phased return to school, a phased return to business, a phased return to personal life.”

And he said he had “anxieties” about the resumption of foreign travel from as early as May 17.Mr Drakeford told BBC Breakfast that September 2020 was a “difficult month” in Wales as people returned to the country from holidays abroad and brought Covid-19 with them.

“I do not want to see all the hard work that people in Wales have put in over recent weeks being undermined by the reimportation of the virus,” he said.

“The Prime Minister’s road map for England is very clear that these are indicative dates and when I’ve raised this with UK ministers they always emphasise that the decision would be made in the circumstances much closer to the time.

“I am saying that for me, that does look early.

“I would want to be completely confident that we are not running the risk of a reimportation of the virus, particularly now that we know there are new variants of this virus in other parts of the world.”

Businesses that will be affected by ongoing restrictions will be supported by an additional £150 million from the Welsh Government.

Mr Drakeford is expected to say: “We are taking a phased approach to unlocking each sector – starting with schools.

“We will make step-by-step changes each week to gradually restore freedoms. We will monitor each change we make, so we know what impact each change has had on Wales’ public health situation.”

Wales’s health minister Vaughan Gething previously said people living in more rural areas would be given allowance to travel greater distances than those in urban towns and cities if the county moved to “stay local” period.

He said any new rules would likely last a “few weeks” before the country would allow greater freedom to travel, with the rules on travel needing to be relaxed to allow self-contained holiday accommodation to reopen in time for Easter.

Public Health Wales said on Thursday there were a further 195 cases of coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 205,788.The agency reported 12 further deaths, taking the total in the country since the start of the pandemic to 5,424.