Coronavirus and the UK immigration system (as of 04 June 2020)

Compulsory quarantine

International travellers arriving in the UK on or after 8 June 2020 are being told to go into quarantine for two weeks:

To limit the spread of infection, arrivals must self-isolate for 14 days.

There is a separate list of exceptions, including for arrivals from within the Common Travel Area covering the UK, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This is so long as the person hasn’t arrived in the Common Travel area within the past two weeks and then travelled on to the UK. If, say, someone travels from the Netherlands to Ireland on 10 June and then on to the UK on 20 June, they will need to spend a further four days self-isolating here to bring themselves up to two weeks.

Those without accommodation lined up “will be required to self-isolate in facilities arranged by the government”. The quarantine is very full-on: those subject to it “should not leave their accommodation for 14 days”.

The detailed legal rules, for England, are in the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations 2020. Similar arrangements apply in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 

The quarantine will be reviewed every few weeks, meaning that the earliest it will be dropped or adjusted is the week commencing 28 June.

There are also fresh legal obligations on transport operators to provide coronavirus information to inbound passengers.