Met Police concludes investigation into Downing Street lockdown breaches with 126 fines issued

In total, detectives have made 126 referrals for fixed penalty notices (FPNs) to the ACRO Criminal Records Office for breaches of Covid-19 regulations.

These referrals relate to events on the following eight dates:

• 20 May 2020

• 18 June 2020
• 19 June 2020
• 13 November 2020
• 17 December 2020
• 18 December 2020
• 14 January 2021
• 16 April 2021

Of the referrals, all resulted or will do so in a FPN being issued. 53 were men and 73 were women. Some people received more than one FPN.

Officers will not be releasing or confirming the identity of anyone involved.

Acting Deputy Commissioner Helen Ball, of the Met said: “There is no doubt that the pandemic impacted all of us in so many ways and strong feelings and opinions have been expressed on this particular issue.

“When Covid regulations were introduced, the Met was clear that whilst we would not routinely investigate breaches of regulations retrospectively, there may be occasions when it would be appropriate to do so.

“The information that we received with regard to the alleged breaches in Downing Street and Whitehall was sufficient to reach our criteria to begin such an investigation.

“Our investigation was thorough and impartial and was completed as quickly as we could, given the amount of information that needed to be reviewed and the importance of ensuring that we had strong evidence for each FPN referral.

“This investigation is now complete.”