November 2020 international travel rules

Butts

silvercar said:

I thought using the e-gates, meant a check was made automatically that your passport number matched a completed PLF. so at least it would detect that you had submitted a form,

You would hope so, but I'm not sure it's that joined up.

epm-84

silvercar said:

I thought using the e-gates, meant a check was made automatically that your passport number matched a completed PLF. so at least it would detect that you had submitted a form,

At Manchester Airport they have a Home Office person asking to see PLFs prior to allowing people through the e-gates.

epm-84

cubegame said:

epm-84 said:

cubegame said:

epm-84 said:

cubegame said:

epm-84 said:

cubegame said:

epm-84 said:

CKhalvashi said:

epm-84 said:

Nutty75 said:

I still haven’t found the answer if our reason for travel is valid during this lockdown - we have a property in Tenerife that we are hoping to rent out - but before we can rent it - we have a few plumbing issues to sort - and as my husband is a plumber he is carrying out these works himself.   The second reason is that we have been advised to have a Spanish Will drawn up so we have an appointment with our spanish Lawyer to go and sign the Will . Our daughters were due to fly out with us - but as they would be going for a holiday I have cancelled their flights as they obviously had no reason to travel - but I wish I could find out if our reasons are valid.  I did contact my travel insurance company and they thought that because my husband would be completing work on the apartment this would be acceptable - but they are coming back to me to confirm this and the Signing of the Will - I just wanted to check we would have insurance if we traveled - anyone have any idea? 

I'd say no.

Section 12 in the guidance refers to it not being permitted to stay overnight in your second home, as you don't currently rent it out it and don't live there it must be your second home.

Section 13 provides guidance for moving home and it's where people are claiming there's a loophole and you can pretend you're looking at buying a home abroad.  However, the section says "Follow the national guidance on moving home safely" and that links to a page where it specifically talks about moving to a new home in England, so there's nothing to suggest that extends to moving to a home abroad.

It's not your travel insurers responsibility to say whether a trip is legal, it's their responsibility to advise whether the cover you have is suitable for the trip you want to make.  

So you're saying it's illegal for someone to move abroad?

Not buying that.

Not everyone will be moving to a new home in England. Not legal advice, but IMO OP is therefore entitled to remain in that property overnight, as it's visiting a residential property to undertake any activities required for the rental or sale of that property.

The legislation makes no reference to the property being in England, and therefore it must be assumed as intended to be anywhere within the world. If the Government haven't written the legislation adequately, the onus is on them. That said, the government hasn't adequately done anything since being elected, so getting a piece of legislation correct isn't exactly within their capabilities.

Whether it's legal or not, realistically you can't buy a house in 95% of Europe as either local restrictions would get in the way or you'd have to self-isolate for 2 weeks each time you return, which would prevent you from letting anyone view your home in England. If you argue you'd be buying a second home then you might have to prove that's covered, given travelling to a second home isn't covered.

I think for most people if they claimed they were going to the Canaries to buy a house, if either the police or border control asked a few basic questions about their plans, they'd quickly find out it's a lie as buying a house needs a lot of planning, not just phoning up some random estate agent in Spain and making an appointment you plan to cancel as soon as you arrive.

The big issue for the poster in question is it does specifically say staying in your second home is not permitted and that doesn't have an exception for those repairing a home ahead of sale.  In the circumstances it would probably be easier to just get a local workman to do the necessary work or to postpone it for a few weeks.

The reality is that if you want to go overseas it's extremely unlikely that you will questioned on your reason for doing so.

In the extremely unlikely event of some plod stopping you on the way to or at an airport I think you would be making a huge assumption that they would spend any time considering and analysing your reason for travel which would involve an in-depth knowledge of purchasing a property abroad.

Police are trained to spot when people are lying.  If they are convinced when someone says the purpose of their trip is to buy property abroad they could easily ask a few questions, which someone not buying a property abroad would struggle to answer.

Yes, theoretically a police officer could ask questions but I seriously doubt that they would be able to adequately exercise the correct discretion that their powers allow to prevent someone boarding a flight for which they have paid for and are legally entitled to board.

In a hypothetical situation where a passenger has 30 minutes to be able to board a plane you're in cloud cuckoo land if you think a uniformed officer would be able to correctly investigate if an reason for being away from home is valid. Far easier for them to wave you through warm and safe in the knowledge that their due diligence has been appropriate.

You're mistaken if you think the police would be standing at the departure gate.  While you didn't directly say they would but you've effectively said it by saying it would be happening 30 minutes before the plane departs.  Anyone who turns up at the airport 30 minutes before their flight is scheduled to leave has already missed their flight. 

The police would be likely outside the terminal where they can do a number of things like check people are not turning up to see people off or to plane spot, check taxis dropping people off are properly licenced and insured etc. (That is unless the airline or airport requests their presence at the departure gates.)

I don't know why you would think it would take a long time for a policeman to say to someone (not necessarily every arriving passenger):

"Are you travelling today?"

"What's the reason for your journey?"

And only if they believe someone is lying would they ask anything further.  Further questions could be:

"Which town are you buying a new home in?"

"How many properties are you viewing/have you viewed?"

"When are you moving out to Spain?"

"Have you found a new job in Spain?"

That would take 1 minute for someone who is being honest and truthful to answer but for someone who is having to make things up because they are lying that might take longer, but it doesn't matter if it takes longer for people trying to break the law as the police are there to stop people breaking the law.   

None of this happened when I flew out of Bristol on Friday. The armed police on patrol have more important things to do than question law abiding members of the public especially as the UK terrorism threat is now extreme.

I didn't say the police will, I said the police could and what police do or don't do can vary between forces.  We do have a national counter terrorism police force now, as well as British Transport Police and the local police forces, so you might even see 3 different police forces if you arrive at an airport by train and then proceed to fly out of the airport.  It certainly isn't the job of the armed counter terrorism police force to check you are obeying lockdown restrictions, unless they think you are a terrorist! 

I think you're a bit naive about how these things are being policed. Presumably you were under the impression that UK border force officials or someone else was actually checking the arrival forms this summer whereas the reality was completely the opposite.

During the travel corridor period I have entered the UK five times at three different airports. Twice I was travelling from a destination which required quarantine holding the appropriate documents from my employer outlining why I was exempt. On both of these trips the flight I was arriving on was OBVIOUSLY the only place ALL the passengers were arriving from and yet every passenger had the opportunity to pass unhindered through E-passport gates. My passport doesn't work at e-gates and so I saw an officer who had absolutely no interest in an arrival form.

Well from my experience in October, I was asked to show I had a completed PLF by the staff at the EU airport I was flying out of and I was asked to show it by someone in Home Office uniform on arrival at a UK airport, before being directed to the e-gates by airport staff.  I noticed she directed someone with no form to her colleague to sort out.  And this was from a destination on the travel corridor list and for an arrival at an unsociable hour. 

As it was a new system perhaps it took them a couple of months to get proper checks in place.  There were media reports about the Greek PLF system (one of the first introduced) resulting in people wrongly being denied boarding because some carriers misinterpreted rules.  Maybe the Home Office ensured the same mistakes weren't repeated with the British PLF, even if it meant some people going unchecked for the first couple of months.

I have also never said or implied the police will always be at the door of airport terminals.  Police never are predictable with regards to their location, being predictable would make it easy for criminals!  However, police like to kill two birds with one stone where possible so if they see a car reported as stolen/uninsured/untaxed driving in to an airport, they might well do a few other checks while they are at the airport.

Butts

epm-84 said:

silvercar said:

I thought using the e-gates, meant a check was made automatically that your passport number matched a completed PLF. so at least it would detect that you had submitted a form,

At Manchester Airport they have a Home Office person asking to see PLFs prior to allowing people through the e-gates.

From my own experience returning from Italy at Heathrow Airport in August and October there was no sign of anyone asking for PLF's.

silvercar

I flew in to terminal 5 at Heathrow in September and there appeared to be people sent back from the e-gates and directed to an area with tablets and forms. I couldn't guarantee that this was as a result of the e-gates rejecting people who hadn't submitted forms online, but it looked like it.

Ganga

Just returned from Greece and they closed the E-Gates at Newcastle airport ,everyone had to show the form on their mobiles to the staff at the desks before they checked the passports, took a bit longer but no problems ,do not know what happened to the passengers who had not completed the form but i think they had some staff with tablets/computors to help.