Research and analysis

Data on health measures at the UK border

Published 10 September 2020

On the 8 June the government announced a suite of measures at the border requiring all international arriving passengers to fill in a contact locator form to provide contact and travel information so they can be contacted if they, or someone they may have been in contact with develops the disease.

The measures also require arrivals from certain countries to self-isolate for a period of 14 days. The data in the table below is for the period from the 8 June to 7 September and is from three main sources:

  • Border Force spot checks on arriving passengers at the UK border and the number of Fixed Penalty Notices issued
  • Public Health England who operate the Isolation Assurance Service which checks quarantine compliance. The data includes the numbers spoken to and the volume of calls which in a significant number of cases will include multiple calls to individuals
  • Police information on the number of fixed penalty notices they have issued. Further detail will be provided in the NPCC’s monthly reporting

The data provides an indication of the considerable combined industry and cross government effort to ensure that the measures are being complied with. This is vital as it supports the track and trace process and controls the spread of the virus.

The Home Office has worked closely with industry, the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department for Transport who are supporting the enforcement of the measures by advising passengers when they book, at departure and during the flight of the requirements of the regulations.

On arrival Border Force conduct spot checks on passenger forms which include contact details, passport number and address while in the UK.

Further compliance checks are then carried out by Public Health England’s Isolation Assurance Service who attempt to contact randomly sampled arriving passengers to ensure that they are self-isolating. Each traveller can be called up to 3 times on subsequent days and be then potentially be sent a text. Therefore, each traveller sampled will receive between 1-4 contact attempts. IAS will only contact passengers with a quarantine address in England and Northern Ireland.

If the traveller is not complying or cannot be contacted, then they are referred to the police through the Border Force Criminal Justice Unit. Enforcement activity by police forces should be seen in the context of wider police activity to engage with the public to explain and encourage compliance with the new regulations.

Data period: 8 June to 7 September:

Enforcement activity Number
Passengers Spot Checked at the Border by Border Force 1,966,394
Fixed Penalty Notices Issued at the Border by Border Force 14
PHE Isolation Assurance Service (IAS) - Number of total calls (including SMS) made to eligible UK arrivals.* 149,579
Successful contact made by IAS to eligible UK arrivals that have had a telephone conversation with or have responded to an SMS from the IAS. 66,773
Confirmed Compliance with self- isolation by PHE** 64,800
Fixed Penalty Notices issued by the police*** 20

*IAS activity includes up to 3 calls and a text per eligible UK arrivals (resident in Northern Ireland or England) sampled. Currently 1500 new eligible arrivals are sampled in each day.

** Confirmed compliant are those sampled non-exempt UK arrivals with whom contact is successfully made and have confirmed they are self-isolating and will continue to do so.

*** Notices issued by Police, successfully recorded, and letters sent, by ACRO as being issued from 00:00 hours 8th June 2020 to 23:59 hours 7th September 2020.

Understanding the data

The data is extracted from live systems and therefore maybe subject to change. In addition, the public health and Police data is for England. Border Force interventions data is a UK wide data set.

The IAS process involves multiple attempts to contact those sampled over the course of 4 days. This means there will always be a group who are sampled and reported in the selected time period who have not yet completed the process and therefore cannot be assigned an outcome.

The data included here provides an indication of the levels of compliance with the Regulations introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.