The Amendment Regulations are here - made today (!) and laid before Parliament tomorrow morning at 11:30am
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/558/pdfs/uksi_20200558_en.pdf https://twitter.com/adamwagner1/status/1267018505796403200

The lockdown regulations have changed very significantly:
- No more prohibition on leaving the place you are living or being outside of it without a "reasonable excuse"
- Regulation 6 replaced by prohibition on staying over somewhere without a reasonable excuse

To be clear - from tomorrow
- he police can no longer get involved with why you are outside of the place you are living.
- No more power to direct people back home
- no more power to fine for leaving/being outside of home without reasonable excuse

Second big change: Regulation 7 has been completely replaced
- Gatherings of 6 people or less allowed outside in any formation (i.e. from any number of households)
- Gatherings over 6 people prohibited without "reasonable excuse", there is an *exhuastive* list of excuses AND..

Third big change - now illegal for there to be a gathering of 2 or more people in private places, which includes your own home, unless it falls within one of the (it seems exhaustive) list of reasonable excuses
- can be people from same household (obvs)
- for work etc

2 months after the regulations appeared we finally have a definition of a gathering

"two or more people are present together in the same place in order to engage in any form of social interaction with each other, or to undertake any other activity with each other" @SeethingMead

Some more places which must shut (although they prob weren't open anyway). What is a "landmark"?

A few more places that can open

Also, the definition of "elite athlete" gets a lot of attention in these amendments. Long story short, I don't qualify. @holland_tom maybe you do?

Ooh, cheeky little change in the pre-amble to add a proportionality test, was necessity, perhaps a response to the recent @HumanRightsCtte report... chuffed about that actually https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/5454/default/

The weird thing about these regulations is that despite it aways being clear that virus transmission is more indoors than outdoors, for the first time (in England) during this lockdown the police have power to regulate what we are doing in private spaces including the home.

Wait, believe it or not this could be correct!
https://twitter.com/icecolbeveridge/status/1267103055293681664?s=20

But the people in the shop need to have gathered there in order to shop "with each other" so unless you all met up there deliberately, then you're safe

Argh it is so frustrating that these regulations don't get put to parliament at least for debate. It's madness. These are huge changes and they affect every single person in England, and there are loads of potentially unclear and difficult bits. Why so reluctant to engage debate?