North Wales Police adopts tougher stance against coronavirus rule breakers as number of fines issued hits 583

North Wales Police says it is taking a tougher stance against coronavirus rule breakers as the force believes the public should be aware of the regulations by now.

The comments were made as it was confirmed that officers in the region have issued a total of 583 fixed penalty notices to people flouting measures aimed at stopping the spread of Covid-19.

Chief Constable Carl Foulkes told councillors this week that the force had originally taken an approach known as the four Es to “engage, explain, encourage and enforce” the rules.

It has recently started to clamp down on offences more quickly to tackle individuals who deliberately choose to ignore the precautions.

At a meeting of the North Wales Police and Crime Panel, Mr Foulkes said it had led to two £10,000 fines being handed to the organisers of illegal music events.

He said: “Now we move to enforcement much more quickly because if people know what they should and shouldn’t be doing, they know what the right thing to do is.

“There’s always those people who are getting it slightly wrong, and that’s fine and we’ll make sure that we do the right thing.

“But if somebody’s blatantly abusing it, whereas at the start we would have gone through the four Es, we are now moving to enforcement much more quickly.

“In the last period, we had about 28 enforcements and we’ve moved to enforcement much more clearly.

“People knew they shouldn’t have a music event, which is why we issued two £10k fixed penalty notices there.

“The vast majority of our fixed penalty notices have been for people travelling into Wales.”