From 19 July, HM Government’s Roadmap out of Lockdown moves to Step 4. With this, most of the legal requirements for Covid precautions are lifted. But this only relaxes the legal requirements; Covid has not gone away, far from it and the effect to Step 4 is to move from State control to personal responsibility. The Government’s stance now is to give guidance which they “expect and recommend” responsible people to observe, which you can find here: link – HMG Guidance
The Club’s Covid-19 Committee has met to consider the implications of Step 4 and how the Club should respond. Partly our response is driven by the conditions established by Wanstead House and our need to comply with their requirements to satify the terms of our room hire. These conditions have made Wanstead House a Covid-secure environment and given us an advantage that most other Essex chess clubs lack. The Covid Committee has therefore decided to retain for the foreseeable future the four principal features which allow our members to continue to enjoy our game safely:
- Ventilation
- Face coverings
- Social distancing
- Sanitisation
We can relax the previous Rule of 6, while social distancing requirements with face coverings is 1 metre+ so we have taken the step to go back to one board chess. We retain the Attendance Form which members must complete for every visit. This satisfies: i) Track & Trace; ii) there is still a limit to the numbers we can have in each room at WH, so we need to know in advance who will be attending. These conditions should see us through the summer, for which the Summer Events OTB page has been updated.
The full details of the new club rules for Covid-19 are given in the documents linked below, which have already been circulated to all members. The “prevent the spread” document explains more fully why we have decided to retain these conditions.
Downloads: Summer 2021 Update – stay safe prevent the spread | Covid Precautions at WWCC