Lockdown changes in England from July 4

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Johnson, whose popularity has flagged over his government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, earlier promised to fast track 5-billion pound ($6.14 billion) of infrastructure spending to jump start the economy, which has been largely shut for three months.

Returning to the promises he made at last year’s election, he is targeting much of the spending at those areas in northern and central England, where many traditionally opposition Labour-supporters voted for the governing Conservatives.

The new planning regulations will give greater freedom for buildings and land in town centres to change use without planning permission and create new homes from vacant and redundant buildings.

The changes, which are planned to come into effect by September through changes to the law, include:

— More types of commercial premises having total flexibility to be repurposed through reform of the Use Classes Order.

— A building used for retail, for instance, would be able to be permanently used as a café or office without requiring a planning application and local authority approval.

— Pubs, libraries, village shops and other types of uses essential to communities will not be covered by these flexibilities.

— A wider range of commercial buildings will be allowed to change to residential use without the need for a planning application.

— Builders will no longer need a normal planning application to demolish and rebuild vacant and redundant residential and commercial buildings if they are rebuilt as homes.

— Property owners will be able to build additional space above their properties via a fast track approval process, subject to neighbour consultation.

— Work will begin to look at how land owned by the government can be managed more effectively.

He told Sun Online Travel: “The bulk of popular attractions will be doing timed ticketing and all restaurants will be doing reservations.

“We need to also avoid people turning up and queuing at places, so for takeaway food like fish and chips, people will need to order their food online and then wait to be told when to collect it.”

Bottles, beers cans, used sanitary products and even human faeces are among many other things that were discovered by volunteers who carried out a beach clean in Exmouth yesterday (June 28).

Leicester looks set to be the first city where a local lockdown could be imposed – with new confirmed cases on the rise.

But it is by no means an isolated case, with 36 cities or counties across England now seeing a fresh surge in cases.

Some, such as Doncaster, have seen a larger week-on week increase in new cases, and many of the areas seeing new upticks in Covid-19 are those in urban, densely populated areas.

The Government has consistently said it will consider regional and local lockdowns if necessary, and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has deployed four mobile testing sites to Leicester and made thousands of home testing kits available.

Cases on the rise

New confirmed cases are rising in 36 of the 151 upper-tier local authorities in England as the nation has begun emerging from lockdown.

Some, such as Sunderland, York and the Isle of Wight, detected just a single case in the week to June 26, but had not picked up any cases the week prior.

Others are seeing much higher numbers of new cases, including Leicester.

And cases are rising week-on-week in the city – from 39 cases in the week to June 19 to 41 cases in the week to June 26.

A councillor is calling for two bylaws to be brought in to prevent anti-social behaviour at Clifton Beach in Sidmouth.

Sir Peter said that the Department of Health and Social Care had been slow to share the figures on which they were basing their decision, with hospital admissions and the number of fatalities going down “exactly in proportion to the decline elsewhere in the country”.

“We don’t know if there is anything there at all,” he said. The DHSC shared more data on test results from the city with the council on Thursday, he said, but this did not include information on people’s ethnicity or place of work, which would help target interventions.

The process has been “incredibly frustrating”, he added. “Almost every day last week, we had to argue for them to keep on doing testing here.

“They were talking about pulling out one of the [mobile] testing stations.

“We’ve been diverted by an enormous amount of time spent just persuading them to do what I would have thought was the obvious, which was to up the level of testing in the city, not withdraw it.”

Asked by Mr Marr whether the reports on lockdown plans for Leicester were accurate, Ms Patel said: “Well, that is correct.”

She added: “There will be support going into Leicester and in fact the health secretary was in touch with many of us over the weekend explaining some of the measures, the support on testing, resources that will go into the local authority as well.”

Yesterday Samworth Brothers, which runs one of the UK’s largest sandwich production operations, confirmed that a “handful” of staff at its Leicester factory had contracted the virus, and there have been reports of large gatherings outside takeaway restaurants.

There are also concerns that the virus has been spreading throughout the city’s large Asian community, who are more likely to live in multigenerational households.

It is understood that the government has the power to take action under the 1984 Public Health Act. However, it is unlikely that action will be taken before the middle of this week.

“So far local action has been taken to lock down individual hospitals and GP surgeries where there has been an outbreak but this situation is more serious than that, although no decision has yet been taken,” a government source said.

Separately, an expert in infectious diseases has said there were questions over how a localised lockdown would work. Keith Neal, emeritus professor of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said: “Defining the specific area will be one of the largest problems. Local authority boundaries can run down the middle of the street with one side in one local authority and the opposite another.

“Urban sprawl has allowed towns and cities to expand resulting in these areas often joining other areas who identify differently and do not see themselves as part of the expanding town or city.

“Locking down at the regional level would be seen as unfair or worse as Leicester City has really very little to do with rural Lincolnshire. People do not identify with their regional boundaries and many would not actually know where they are.

“If Leicester is locked down, how much of the surrounding area do you include. A quick view at the satellite picture demonstrates this problem. Much of the surrounding area probably does not identify as part of Leicester City itself.”

Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, said: “Unfortunately the fact that the government is having to contemplate specific measures to control the spread of the virus in Leicester is now unavoidable in order to protect the rest of the country.”

A spokesman for the DHSC said: “We are supporting the council and local partners in Leicester to help prevent further transmission of the virus. We have deployed four mobile testing sites and made thousands of home testing kits available, to ensure anyone in the area who needs a test can get one.

“NHS Test and Trace will contact anyone testing positive to help them identify their recent contacts, and advise who may have been near to someone with the virus to stay at home to prevent the spread.

“We urge the people of Leicester to continue to practise social distancing, wash their hands regularly, get tested immediately if they have symptoms and follow the advice they receive if contacted by NHS Test and Trace. This advice is there to protect communities and save lives.”

Analysis of public records shows a significant cash injection from property tycoons linked to developments, including blocks of luxury flats with no affordable housing, which were signed off by Johnson and his deputy, Sir Edward Lister, who oversaw planning.

Richard Desmond, the former owner of the Daily Express, is among the donors, along with the billionaire Reuben family and the Mayfair-based property firm Delancey owned by Eton-educated Jamie Ritblat.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing, but the fallout over a decision by the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, to approve Desmond’s controversial £1bn development in east London has attracted scrutiny of the relationship between wealthy property developers and senior Tories.

Details of the donations have emerged as both Johnson and Lister, now a senior Downing Street adviser who is reportedly in the running for a peerage, face questions about their ties to Desmond amid “cash for favours” allegations.

Downing Street has refused to disclose Johnson’s contact with Desmond since becoming prime minister after it emerged the tycoon had donated £12,000 to the Tories, two weeks after Jenrick approved his proposed development. Jenrick has since reversed his decision after conceding it was “unlawful by reason of apparent bias”. Desmond has said the donation was too small to be significant.

A spokesperson for the Conservatives insisted all donations were transparently declared and complied fully with the law. A Downing Street spokesman said all planning decisions by Johnson and Lister “were made with due process and a fair hearing in line with public law principles” and “any of suggestion of improper conduct is untrue”. “Party political matters are never a material consideration in planning,” he said.

City Hall originally approved Desmond’s proposed development on the Isle of Dogs in May 2016 after Johnson took control of the application, which Tower Hamlets council had rejected. Applications for the other developments connected to the latest crop of Tory donors were not formally taken over by the mayor, but proposals were referred to City Hall by local planning authorities for his approval.

In April 2016, for example, Lister signed off on the redevelopment of Millbank Tower in Westminster, backed by David and Simon Reuben. The brothers, who made much of their fortune trading metals before building a property empire, are the second richest family in the UK with an estimated £16bn fortune, according to the Sunday Times.

In November 2019, shortly before the general election, the Conservatives received £200,000 from a company co-owned by the brothers, European Land & Property, latest Electoral Commission data shows. The company was behind a separate development in Paddington, a 34-storey tower offering “the height of luxury living” that Lister progressed in 2011.

David Reuben’s son Jamie Reuben who is involved with the brothers’ business affairs, donated around £580,000 to the Tories between October 2019 and March 2020.

A spokesman for the Reuben family said the brothers did not discuss either application with Johnson or Lister. The family’s donations “were made long after planning decisions had been made and were completely unrelated to them”, he said.

The Electoral Commission data also shows Ritblat’s Delancey donated £100,000 to the Tories in December. Ritblat is the son of another high-profile property magnate, Sir John Ritblat.

Delancey held several meetings with Johnson’s City Hall over a range of developments. The firm and its partners, Qatari Diar, bought the former Olympic athletes’ village in Stratford in 2011 as part of a reported £500m deal that Johnson championed. Lister signed off on Delancey’s plans for the former Olympic media centre in 2014.

Internal emails obtained by the Guardian through a freedom of information request show Delancey met Lister a number of times to discuss their projects, including the Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

In September 2013, two days after a dinner with Delancey, Lister set up a meeting between officials and senior executives at the firm to provide it with reassurance about the tube station at the site, the emails show.

“I have agreed a meeting in two weeks’ time to try and push them to make the commitment!” Lister wrote. “This will be good news if we can pull it off.”

Three months later, Delancey and its investment partners completed a deal to acquire the shopping centre. The scheme, which has received significant opposition from local businesses and residents, was eventually signed off by the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, in 2018.

A lawyer for Delancey said there was “no connection whatsoever” between any decision taken by City Hall and the company’s recent donation. He said there was nothing improper about any of the company’s interactions with the Greater London Authority.

He insisted discussions with planners were in line with normal practice for any developer considering a major regeneration project. Irrespective of the political affiliations of the mayor “it is incumbent upon Delancey to deal with and have a working relationship with whoever is in office”, he said.

Asked whether Ritblat had spoken to Lister since he entered Downing Street, the lawyer said: “Jamie Ritblat has spoken to Sir Edward a number of times during lockdown. He was asked to provide Sir Edward with some practical insight into the issues facing the real estate market in light of government lockdown because of the current pandemic.”

Other developments Johnson gave the green light to include 22 Bishopsgate, a skyscraper in the City of London developed by a property business co-owned by Sir Stuart Lipton. Lipton donated £8,500 to the Tories in January. A spokesman for Lipton said the donation was “made entirely in a personal capacity and had nothing to do with his wider business interests”.

Separately, the data also shows a return to political giving by Nick Candy, one of the wealthy Candy brothers, who contributed £100,000 to Tory coffers in March 2020. The Candy brothers have worked together in London’s high-end property market for decades.

A spokeswoman for Nick Candy said, however, that contrary to reports in 2013 he was not involved in a proposed luxury development near the Tower of London that Johnson had signed off in May 2013. She said SQ Guernsey, the company which bought the site for £34m, was a subsidiary of CPC Group which is 100% owned by Christian Candy, and that “any suggestion that Nick Candy has anything to do with the Sugar Quay project, despite previous media reports, is false”.

She also said: “It is entirely false to state Nick Candy’s donation to the Conservative party in March 2020 was in any way connected to City Hall’s planning approval for Sugar Quay over seven years ago, or that it was connected to any other development project that was granted planning permission while Mr Johnson was mayor of London.”

Using the WhatsApp messaging service, he instructed his private secretary to tell staff gathered in his departmental headquarters on the afternoon of January 13 , the day before his decision, that it was “final”.

Months earlier, Jenrick watched a promotional video of the Westferry scheme on Desmond’s iPhone at a Tory fundraiser at the Savoy Hotel and agreed to a site tour.

The unsuspecting official, who was at the heart of the decision, said they were shocked by Jenrick’s urgency as they warned him of the legal risks of the scheme and a likely judicial review.

They left with the impression: “We had to get with the programme or go away.”

The source’s claim that Jenrick showed “total disregard” for the law in the run up to the decision will reignite calls for his resignation.

Those present on the fourth floor of 2 Marsham Street, a government building in Westminster, included Steve Quartermain, England’s most senior planner, planning officials and civil service lawyers. None was aware of Jenrick’s potential conflicts of interest.

Jenrick withdrew his approval in response to a legal challenge from Tower Hamlets council last month, accepting that it was “unlawful” due to “apparent bias”.

Steve Reed, the shadow housing secretary, said: “These explosive revelations show Mr Jenrick has new and very serious questions to answer.”

He added: “Labour last night called on the government halt its plans to move housebuilding powers from local councils to the housing secretary.”

The latest revelation comes amid fresh evidence of Boris Johnson’s own contact with Desmond, who also avoided paying £106m after the government waived affordable housing rules.

In an interview, the tycoon reveals that Johnson told him that he would change gambling rules to help his business after he lobbied him at a Downing Street event.

According to Desmond, Johnson “ran up to him” and said he would raise the maximum legal jackpot for his Health Lottery to £1m. He said: “He [Johnson] agreed it . . . He said, ‘Right, good news for you. We’re gonna do it.’”

Their conversation at a reception for business leaders took place on September 17, as the government considered whether to approve the Westferry plan. Desmond insisted that they did not discuss it at the event.

Last week, Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, said Johnson considered the Westferry case “closed”.

However, the detailed account of Jenrick’s conduct in the run-up to the decision will raise fresh questions of the minister. Jenrick has only stated that he “told” his private office of his meeting with Desmond.

Alex Thomas, a programme director at the Institute for Government, said it would have been appropriate for Jenrick to put his potential conflict in writing given that he decided not to recuse himself from the process.

He said such a document would have been a “note or an email to his principal private secretary” and that it would outline “what happened at the event, why he felt no substantial discussion had taken place, and that no further contact with the applicant would occur.”

Last night, a government spokesman said: “As made clear in the secretary of state’s letter to the [housing, communities and local government] select committee, this was a thorough decision-making process, approached with an open mind, with no question of bias. The secretary of state read the [planning] inspector’s report and representations from parties and took advice from officials throughout the process.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said:“A full account has been sent to the HCLG select committee by the secretary of state and the department has published relevant documents online. We have nothing further to add.”

A spokesman for 10 Downing Street said: “The government’s position on society lottery rules has been set out by DCMS and the Gambling Commission, following open public consultation by both.”

Minister in a hurry told officials: It’s my way or the highway

Jenrick was a man in a hurry. It was less than a week after MPs had returned to parliament following their Christmas recess when the 38-year-old housing secretary dispatched his private secretary to relay orders to some of his most senior civil servants.

On the afternoon of January 13 they huddled in a breakout area on the fourth floor of 2 Marsham Street, the glass building in Westminster that is home to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which Jenrick heads.

Jenrick’s aide quickly got to the point. The secretary of state wanted to issue a decision letter the next day approving the Westferry scheme on the Isle of Dogs.

According to a civil servant at the meeting, his aide was texting to Jenrick on WhatsApp as the meeting unfolded. The source, who has come forward to detail the minister’s “disregard for due process and accountability”, said that officials were left in no doubt that their views were not welcome.

The aide is claimed to have said: “We’re going ahead with this. It’s the secretary of state’s decision. It’s final.”

Those gathered around a table near the fourth-floor atrium included Steve Quartermain, England’s most senior planning official, communications advisers and government lawyers.

None knew Jenrick had a potential conflict of interest that would soon imperil his career: he had sat next to Desmond at a £900-a-head fundraising dinner just eight weeks earlier at the Savoy in London, where the tycoon had shown him a promotional video of the scheme. Desmond had later implored Jenrick to act quickly, so he would avoid a £30m-£50m Tower Hamlets council community infrastructure levy that would come into force in mid-January, joking in a text: “We don’t want to give the Marxists loads of doe [sic] for nothing!”

The civil service source is insistent that key officials on the case were not informed of Jenrick’s contacts with Desmond. They also allege that Quartermain and Richard Watson, head of the national planning casework unit, practically “begged” him to think again about the decision. Both are said to have been met with indifference.

At the meeting, Quartermain, a moustachioed Durham University graduate who has since left the civil service after several decades, raised his objections one last time. “Look,” he is said to have remarked. “The visual impact of it is terrible. There are policies around tall buildings in that particular area. It’s too big. It’s too tall. It’s too dense.” One of the lawyers weighed in, too, saying the scheme did not comply with affordable housing rules and warning there was a “70% to 80%” chance of a judicial review.

Others expressed concern that Jenrick wanted to blame the delays in Westferry on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, and Tower Hamlets, while touting his approval as a victory for the Conservative government’s housebuilding programme. His aide then delivered the coup de grâce. “Look, guys,” she said. “The secretary of state has made his mind up . . . Let’s get this letter sorted out.” The source recalled: “We all sort of went away.”

In the months building up to the decision, civil servants had argued that Jenrick should reject the Westferry scheme, saying it violated planning rules on several counts and would be dead on arrival if challenged in court.

Not only had he ignored them. He had asked them during purdah — the pre-election period when civil service activity is restricted — to prepare for a decision in the first days of a new government, owing to “sensitivity with timing”.

Why did Jenrick refuse to listen? Why was he in such a rush? And why did officials not know about his dinner with Desmond?

Last month the minister performed a U-turn and consented to his approval being quashed in court, acknowledging that his decision had been “unlawful” as a result of his own “apparent bias”.

But questions have not gone away. First, it emerged that Jenrick approved the plan 24 hours before the levy would have kicked in, saving Desmond millions. Then it transpired that Desmond had donated £12,000 to the Tory party shortly after the decision.

On Wednesday the release of heavily redacted documents shed fresh light on the circumstances of the “cash for favours” scandal.

They showed that Jenrick swiftly texted Desmond after the dinner and agreed to go on a site tour of Westferry and that he also knew about the levy. The documents provide no evidence that Jenrick declared a conflict of interest or detailed his conversations with the billionaire to departmental officials. In Jenrick’s favour, he did not go for the tour, texting Desmond: “I think it is best that we don’t meet until after the matter has been decided.”

For Johnson, this text was enough to conclude that the matter was closed and Jenrick’s seat at the cabinet table was safe. Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, announced that there would be no further investigation.

It is a decision that both reflects Boris Johnson’s authority, given his majority of 80, and his disdain for the vicissitudes of life in the Westminster bubble, having ridden out many scandals himself. It also shows the minister’s proximity to No 10 and his circle of friendships in the upper echelons of the Johnson government.

Jenrick, a father of three and a former director of the auction house Christie’s, was one of three young MPs to back Johnson early in the Tory leadership contest. The others were Rishi Sunak and Oliver Dowden. All were rewarded with plum cabinet posts. Jenrick also boasts of his friendship with Carrie Symonds, Johnson’s fiancée.

Some MPs bristle at his obvious ambition and refer to him as “Robert Generic”. One MP said: “There’s a suspicion that he doesn’t actually believe in anything. He just wants to move up the ladder.” They added that unlike Sajid Javid, the former chancellor, there were “few” points of principle over which he would plausibly resign.

Few doubt Jenrick’s networking skills. He is one of the best-connected ministers in the cabinet, having served as parliamentary private secretary to the then home secretary Amber Rudd and to three leading Brexiteers — Michael Gove, Liz Truss and Esther McVey.

Such friendships may have helped when he faced calls to resign after travelling 150 miles to his manor in Herefordshire at the height of lockdown in April. Jenrick, who is married to Michal Berkner, a wealthy corporate lawyer nine years his senior, claimed that the grade I listed mansion was his family home, although neighbours quickly disputed the claim — as did his own website, which said he lived in London and at his constituency of Newark, Nottinghamshire.

Others believe that Johnson may be protecting Jenrick because of his own links to Westferry. As mayor of London, he gave an earlier, less ambitious version of the Westferry plan his approval in 2016. Sir Edward Lister, now the prime minister’s chief strategic adviser and then deputy mayor for planning, was the person behind the decision, and is said to retain a keen interested in planning.

The disclosure that Johnson and Desmond met on September 17 at Downing Street will do little to quell claims that Desmond enjoys preferential access to No 10, despite his later denial that he lobbied Johnson about the development on this occasion.

Few believe that Jenrick is as “unsackable” as Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief aide. One minister said that talk of a reshuffle had returned over the past week, with Jenrick, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, and Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, the most likely to be demoted. Coffey is said to have challenged Johnson in a cabinet meeting over the rumour, telling him that civil servants went on a “go slow” every time there was speculation about her future. Another source claimed to have spotted a reshuffle whiteboard on a recent visit to No 10.

For the moment, though, the government has shown it will spend considerable political capital on protecting the housing secretary.

It was reported last week that the prime minister had excised an announcement on key planning reforms from a upcoming speech on rebuilding Britain after Covid-19, with the express aim of sparing Jenrick further scrutiny.

The move, if it goes ahead, would give Jenrick greater power to decide on planning applications by creating a new system of development corporations.

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has not yet called for Jenrick to be sacked and would instead prefer for the scandal to go on as long as possible, leading to more scrutiny, revelations and damaging headlines. In the meantime, Steve Reed, the shadow communities secretary, has referred Jenrick to the parliamentary commissioner for standards.

One of the core issues any inquiry will address is how much Jenrick told civil servants about his contact with Desmond.

The fact that no such documents were forthcoming last week is why a senior civil servant who was at the heart of the Westferry decision has come forward today to explain Jenrick’s approach to the development and the civil service generally. The whistleblower said: “Robert Jenrick has pretty much been the worst secretary of state that I’ve had the pleasure of working for.”

They claimed Jenrick had ignored or rejected advice on other occasions and expressed little appreciation of his quasi-judicial role as housing secretary — that is, someone who must make decisions based on planning law, rather than politics.

Any hint of bias can derail a project, which is why planning decisions are usually announced in sober and legalistic letters. But Jenrick is said to have overruled officials and demanded politically charged announcements on controversial plans, including a proposed Holocaust memorial in Westminster and an Indian museum in Camden, north London.

Civil servants are said to have expressed their displeasure to Tom Kennedy, his special adviser, only to be told that Jenrick had “made his decision”. He now faces another High Court battle and judicial review over his decision on the Holocaust memorial.

The whistleblower said Jenrick further infuriated civil servants during the general election campaign, when he insisted the department spend taxpayers’ money buying Facebook ads to promote the Towns Fund, a communities initiative.

The ads apparently violated purdah rules by pledging Tory investment in “red wall” seats. In a “standoffish” meeting about the Towns Fund attended by his special advisers, Jenrick is said to have told a senior civil servant that it was, in effect, “My way or the highway . . . We had to get with the programme or piss off. It was that simple.”

The source said: “The arrogance of the man was just astounding. He wouldn’t listen to anything the civil servants were saying to him. He really had a political ambition, which he was trying to use us to support.”

Flybe investors said the airline could have played a key role in Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ strategy for the regions. They included Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic, Southend Airport’s owner Stobart Group, and the hedge fund Cyrus Capital.

The sentiment appeared to have been shared by then Business Minister Andrea Leadsom, who announced on Twitter that she was ‘delighted’ a rescue had been agreed to ensure ‘UK regions remain connected’.

But, speaking out for the first time since Flybe’s collapse in early March, Stobart’s chief executive Warwick Brady said the ‘politics of Branson got in the way’ of a deal, which subsequently failed to materialise.

Brady said it ‘does grate’ that Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways’ owner IAG, complained the proposed £100million commercial loan was ‘unfair’ a day after Leadsom’s announcement – and just a few months before IAG was granted a £300million Government loan. IAG was also granted £900million of Spanish aid for its Iberia and Vueling divisions.

Branson, who has repeatedly clashed with Walsh, has yet to agree a state loan for his beleaguered Virgin Atlantic, in which his Virgin Group has a 51 per cent stake. The rest is owned by Delta.

Brady spoke to The Mail on Sunday during an exclusive tour of Southend Airport, which is due to restart flights next month. Stobart has spent the past months installing new safety measures for the reopening. It is set to become Britain’s first airport where no passenger will have to remove liquids or laptops from their carry-on bags while going through security.

IAG filed a complaint with the EU in January over the planned rescue of Flybe, arguing it breached state aid rules, giving Flybe an unfair advantage. A string of carriers have since been bailed out.

Brady said: ‘The Government did agree to a £100million commercial loan. Then I think the politics of Branson got in the way. I think it changed the sentiment and then the politicians changed their minds.’

He added: ‘I think he’s been scuppered because people just don’t like bailing out a billionaire.’

Virgin Atlantic held a 30 per cent stake in Flybe, Stobart also held 30 per cent and Cyrus 40 per cent. The three shareholders had agreed to invest more money in Flybe if the Government bailout went ahead.

Brady called Flybe ‘a strategic asset for the country’ and the rescue deal ‘the right thing to do’.

‘Now there’s no one flying from Newquay,’ he said. ‘Southampton was decimated, Belfast is decimated. All those airports had 80 per cent of Flybe traffic.’ He said a delay in EU approval for the loan also caused problems.

‘If we had our time again we’d probably try to work out how to avoid an EU competition delay of six months and then accelerate the restructuring plan,’ he said. ‘There’s a core, good business.’ Brady also criticised the Government’s current quarantine demands on travellers coming to the UK for their holidays and on Britons when they return from trips overseas.

The Government is set to introduce so-called ‘air bridges’ tomorrow – bilateral agreements allowing travel to popular destinations such as France and Spain, without tourists having to go into quarantine.

But Stobart, which is raising up to £100million through new and existing investors, wants Ministers to let people travel freely to a wider range of countries – not just the most popular summer hotspots.

Glyn Jones, chief executive of Southend Airport, said the five most popular destinations being considered at the time accounted for just 51 per cent of Southend’s passenger traffic. He would like to see countries in central and eastern Europe, which have seen low rates of Covid-19 infections, included.

Brady added: ‘If you’re going to lock down and do the 14-day quarantine, they should have done that at the beginning. It’s like they woke up halfway through a bad dream.’

At an eerily quiet Southend Airport, vending machines selling personal protective equipment (PPE) and Perspex screens at check-in desks have been installed.

Passengers’ temperatures will be tested before security in case other countries decide this is necessary.

There is currently just one new ‘touch-free’ X-ray machine in place, but with reduced passenger numbers, no one should have to remove liquids or laptops from bags.

Some two million passengers used Southend last year, but Stobart is planning for five million, helped by a new arrivals terminal, security route and more space for shops.