The Department for Transport has issued new guidelines on the proposed process for transport workers receiving exceptions to leave self-isolation to perform critical work. 

The Prime Minister recently announced that a limited number of fully vaccinated workers in critical roles, who have been identified as contacts of a positive case, may be permitted to continue to attend work as long as they are double vaccinated (with the final dose 14 days prior), do not have symptoms, and have tested negative via both a PCR, and daily lateral flow tests. 

This is a short-term measure before the exemption from self-isolation for fully vaccinated contacts is introduced on 16th August, and is only intended for exceptional circumstances, where there would be a major detrimental impact on essential services or critical national infrastructure, if staff could not attend work. 

According to the Department, the process is intended to be used only for very limited exceptional cases and therefore all requests will be subject to the appropriate level of scrutiny.

This process is not designed to mitigate acute shortages of lorry drivers. 

For more information, visit: www.gov.uk