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Kinloss venue The Loft calls for postcode checker to stop coronavirus spread


By Jonathan Clark

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A LOCAL venue has called for a postcode checker to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

A number of Moray's tourism businesses were given the opportunity to raise their issues with MP Douglas Ross and Visit Moray Speyside chief-executive Laurie Piper via a virtual meeting on Wednesday.

Stakeholders from ten different Moray businesses took part in a virtual conference, hosted from the Enterprise Park near Forres.

Moray MP Douglas Ross joins Laurie Piper, Chief Executive of Visit Moray Speyside, to hold a joint virtual conference with Moray tourism industry representatives discuss the ongoing and emerging issues relating to the struggling local tourism industry...Picture: Daniel Forsyth..
Moray MP Douglas Ross joins Laurie Piper, Chief Executive of Visit Moray Speyside, to hold a joint virtual conference with Moray tourism industry representatives discuss the ongoing and emerging issues relating to the struggling local tourism industry...Picture: Daniel Forsyth..

One of the businesses taking part was The Loft, in Kinloss, which highlighted the difficulty with potentially having guests travelling from areas in lockdown.

General manager Victoria Butler said: "We get bookings online and get our customer's details. If we need to track and trace we can.

"The difficulty we are having is with areas going back into lockdown. We don't want folk here from lockdown areas because we believe if you are in lockdown then you should be in lockdown and shouldn't travel more than five miles.

"This is what the Scottish Government says, but the UK Government says totally the opposite – they say you can go on holiday in a bubble.

"We have spent days finding where people coming from. This started with Leicester and Manchester, we don't know the areas and have spent days trying to figure out if people are coming from areas in lockdown. Aberdeen has now come into it, too."

The Loft has deferred bookings on anyone travelling from the Granite City – as well as other areas of the UK that are in lockdown – but had to do this themselves and has called for help from the Scottish and UK governments with a postcode checker.

Ms Butler added: "We have no ability to know if people were coming from lockdown areas and neither government has a way of checking.

"Businesses are being expected to be responsible and keep our area safe, we scrubbing, cleaning and disinfecting everything – but we are not being given support and that makes me angry.

"Other businesses at the meeting were pretty much in support of some form of postcode tracker that helps us find out who is in lockdown."

Moray MP Douglas Ross said he will look into tracker.

Moray MP Douglas Ross joins Laurie Piper, Chief Executive of Visit Moray Speyside, to hold a joint virtual conference with Moray tourism industry representatives discuss the ongoing and emerging issues relating to the struggling local tourism industry...Picture: Daniel Forsyth..
Moray MP Douglas Ross joins Laurie Piper, Chief Executive of Visit Moray Speyside, to hold a joint virtual conference with Moray tourism industry representatives discuss the ongoing and emerging issues relating to the struggling local tourism industry...Picture: Daniel Forsyth..

Visit Moray Speyside chief-executive Laurie Piper added: "There are emerging concerns around this issue.

"This is an issue that Douglas will take away and do a bit of work on at a UK level. It could be as simple as an online postcode checker for coronavirus lockdown areas."

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