Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that large scale events can take place safely once covid-19 lockdown restrictions are lifted.

As announced by the Prime Minister on Monday 22 February, the government aims to reopen large events and closed settings in Step 4 of the Roadmap. To determine how and when we can lift the restrictions on large events and closed settings we will run a scientific Events Research Programme of pilots, starting in the Spring, to trial running events with larger crowd sizes and reduced social distancing. This will include trialling ‘test-to-enable’ approaches to returning crowds to these settings.

In the interim, whilst the pilot programme runs, we will have capacity caps for events which will return in Step 3: Indoor events = lower of 1000 or 50% of capacity; Outdoor events = lower of 4000 or 50% of capacity; and for large seated outdoor venues, where crowds can be dispersed across a stadium, we will allow up to 10,000 people, or 25% of capacity - whichever is lower.