Partying residents in Scarborough condemned by North Yorkshire Police Covid lead

North Yorkshire Police has once again had to dish out fixed penalty notices for indoor gatherings on the coast as people continue to flout Covid-19 restrictions.

Superintendent Mike Walker, North Yorkshire Police lead for the force’s Covid-19 response, branded those who chose to break the rules as “plain wrong” and warned that lives were being put at risk.

He told a meeting of the North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum this morning that a majority of people were following the rules but as some people were ignoring the dangers.

He said: “House parties, particularly over on the coast, have been one of the main breaches of Covid regulations that we are dealing with.

“Officers are dealing with reports of house parties every night of the week.

“Of the 328 penalty notices we have issued across the county since the beginning of this lockdown 160 have been for indoor gatherings, 92 of those in Scarborough.”

Supt Walker said he welcomed news that fines for house parties of more than 15 people were going to increase from £200 per person to £800 and hoped it would make people reconsider their actions.

He added: “There are a minority of people who think they can carry on doing what they like, when they like and that the same rules and regulations that apply to you or I don’t apply to them.

“They know what they should be doing and why they should be doing it but they choose to ignore the warnings, they choose to ignore the fact that over 100,000 people have died from the virus because what they think what they want to do is more important or they think they won’t catch it.

“In my opinion this is incredibly short-sighted, naive and plain wrong.”

In the last week 87 fines have been handed out across North Yorkshire for a variety of offences, 32 of them in the Scarborough borough.

More than half the fines in the county were handed out to people who live in the local area.