Holidays to become easier as UK scraps all Covid travel restrictions

Going on holiday from the UK to a foreign country will become a lot easier from Friday, as the government prepares to scrap all the remaining coronavirus travel restrictions.

From 4am on Friday (March 18) the law on filling out passenger locator forms for those arriving in the UK will be lifted, as will all testing testing requirements for those arriving into the country.

The changes apply to unvaccinated people as well as those who have been inoculated.

It means there will soon be no Covid-19 legislation in place in the UK for the first time since the first lockdown back in March 2020 - Scotland will relax its final law of wearing face masks from March 21.

However, anyone travelling abroad from the UK will still have to comply with the coronavirus measures in place in their destination.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he was able to make the change because of the UK's low Covid-19 death rate and very high vaccination levels.

He said: "These changes are possible due to our vaccine rollout and mean greater freedom in time for Easter."

Meanwhile, the transport secretary also said he would be signing up to host a Ukrainian refugee fleeing the Russian invasion under the UK's new sponsorship scheme.

Mr Shapps tweeted: "We've spent the past few weeks as a family discussing the devastating situation in Ukraine, and so we intend to apply today to join other UK households in offering our home to provide refuge to Ukrainians until it is safe for them to return to their country."

While the changes make travel easier for all Britons, they will not remove a number of obstacles that remain unvaccinated people hoping to travel abroad.

International travel may still remain hard to achieve for this group of people as many countries around the world still require proof of vaccination as a condition for entry.

Popular holiday destinations such as Spain, France and the United States are among those countries, however places including Greece and Italy will allow unvaccinated travellers so long as they've recently tested negative for Covid-19.

Mr Shapps said he does expect other countries to follow the UK's lead in relaxing all travel restrictions.