The government’s hotel quarantine website remained out of action for most of Friday, after being taken offline just minutes after it launched on Thursday (February 11).
A message on gov.uk on Thursday evening said: “Due to a minor technical issue, the link to the booking portal in this guidance will not be available until later today. Please return to this page later if you wish to make a booking.”
Visitors to the site on Friday morning (February 12) were still unable to access the website to make a booking and had been greeted with a message saying: “We’ll be back soon! Sorry for the inconvenience but we’re performing some maintenance at the moment.”
The site was still down at 4:45pm on Friday, but at 5:45pm was working.
A Downing Street spokesperson told the BBC: “Work is under way to fix a technical issue.”
Paul Charles, founder of the PC Agency, tweeted earlier: “And the hotel quarantine booking website remains firmly inoperable. Do governments not have access to website builders?”
The website has been built to enable those returning from ‘red list’ countries to book their 10-day quarantine stay in an approved hotel.
Under new tighter border restrictions, residents of the UK and Ireland returning from 33 ‘Covid hotspot’ countries from Monday are required to isolate under guard.
The stays, which also include mandatory testing on the second and eighth day and transport from the airport or port, cost £1,750 per person.
There will be prison sentences of up to 10 years for those who lie on passenger locator forms, and fines of up to £10,000 for those who fail to quarantine in assigned hotels.
Meanwhile, the BBC is highlighting how the UK hotel quarantine rules are less stringent than those enforced in Australia which are “seen as a gold standard internationally”.
Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, told the Guardian that immigration officials had received “no information at all” and had been checking updates via media reports rather than briefings from government.
More: UK borders ‘too leaky’ to protect against Covid variants