Are we allowed 7 people in our house in different rooms?

[Firefliess]

DSD and her BF have come to stay this weekend. We also have DD and DSS and me and DH at home, so that makes 6 of us. DD wants her BF to stay over tomorrow night. I can't figure out whether that's allowed or not. It would mean 7 people in the house, but in no sense would we be "gathering" DD and her BF would get in late and go straight to her room. Rest of us probably we wouldn't even see him. Is that allowed? Or are people considered to be "gathering" simply by being in the same house? We're in England by the way and not in an area with any local lockdown

@EarlGreyJenny

To all the lawyers out there... and this isn't an argumentative point, just for my own curiosity and clarity... do you consider it legal to have different groups of people of no more than 6 within a household as long as there's no interaction? And, if so, I assume no limit legally on such households?

What do you mean by "different groups of people"? How many in each?

It's pretty clear - no more than six people. And those you don't live with must socially distance from those who do.

So a family of four can have two people over and the four must SD from the two. The four don't need to SD from each other. The two - if they live together don't need to, but if they are separate guests then they need to SD from each other too.

If you have a friend or relative who lives alone or alone other than for aged under 18 kids, then you can form a support bubble with that person where you do not need to SD from them. But once you've chosen your bubble person you can't chop and change.

They become part of your household effectively.

@OhTheRoses

I think I disagree about the 6 excluding children on a different floor. I think the spirit of the legislation is to restrict the spread of the disease. If two adults visit and one has asymptomatic covid that's a total of six in the house re potential infection. If one of four visitors has asymptomatic covid there are 8 people in the house re potential infection. And if a parent catches it, the children upstairs are at risk and the number potentially spreading is higher.

Having said that I do think if one of the stepchildren, referred to in the op, was under 18 they may be exempt from the legislation. If they live alone they may also be part of the "bubble".

If that were the case, surely there would be no need to refer to gatherings at all? The legislation could simply say there must never be more than six people in a domestic dwelling at any one time, subject to exceptions for large families, lodging houses etc. It really is pretty clear that the term "gatherings" was used very deliberately to allow for separate groups within the same building potentially totalling more than 6.

Under 18's are not exempt in England. They are in Scotland. (Because it would be far too simple for us all to have the same rules!).

What else are you all doing in a house together if not gathering?

Course it's fine. Just don't tell everyone and get on with your own life. The rules are stupid now. My child can spend all day sat with his friend in school but can't play together later on it's pathetic. There needs to be some common sense now

I think I disagree about the 6 excluding children on a different floor. I think the spirit of the legislation is to restrict the spread of the disease. If two adults visit and one has asymptomatic covid that's a total of six in the house re potential infection. If one of four visitors has asymptomatic covid there are 8 people in the house re potential infection. And if a parent catches it, the children upstairs are at risk and the number potentially spreading is higher

Well your argument falls down because say the friends are two couples that are child free or empty nesters, so there is nothing to stop our mythical parents of 4 (old enough to not need a babysitter) DC having their gathering at another house or a restaurant, exactly the same infection risk to the DC and clearly allowed (in England and not in an area under local restrictions).

The spirit of the regulations can be interpreted in any way you like but when it comes to whether or not someone has actually broken the law, what the law actually says, not someone's interpretation of 'the spirit' is what matters.

@VanGoghsDog you don't have to socially distance from someone you're in an established relationship with

@VanGoghsDog

I mean, if we're saying it's legal to have the boyfriend over because the 7 people are not gathering together, then it must be legal for someone to have 5 friends over, their partner have 5 friends over and their kid have 5 friends over as long as the groups don't gather all together. Can someone please confirm the legality of this. Because if the law allows for this, IMO, that is bonkers

Unfortunately no.
Somewhat senseless but tomorrow I am hanging out alone with another family member so my family can visit another part of the family nearby. Just to avoid us being 7 at any one point.

Somewhere along the way, the point seems to have been lost @Firefliess; it's not a random inconvenience, it's a public health measure. Transmission of covid-19 is rising in all areas and it's proven that it transmits best indoors. Various laws and additional guidance have been devised to try to reduce transmission to reduce spread so that ultimately fewer people will die.

7>6, the situation is not listed as an exemption. More importantly though, your family need to take on board that social distancing is recommended as much as possible to limit spread of the virus. If you see one of the boyfriends this week and one next week, and anyone in one of the three households is infected, then you'll have halved the extra transmission from your household.

My favourite response to this sort of question was someone bemoaning that their newborn was included in their 6 because 'their chat is shit' 😂

@MRex

Somewhere along the way, the point seems to have been lost *@Firefliess*; it's not a random inconvenience, it's a public health measure. Transmission of covid-19 is rising in all areas and it's proven that it transmits best indoors. Various laws and additional guidance have been devised to try to reduce transmission to reduce spread so that ultimately fewer people will die.

7>6, the situation is not listed as an exemption. More importantly though, your family need to take on board that social distancing is recommended as much as possible to limit spread of the virus. If you see one of the boyfriends this week and one next week, and anyone in one of the three households is infected, then you'll have halved the extra transmission from your household.

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Somehow we've flipped from 'what can I do to help' to 'what can I get away with'.

It's a really tough time for everyone, including me, but anything we do to rein it in is worthwhile.

If separate gatherings of more than six are allowed in the same domestic property surely risks are significantly different if two gatherings of five meet in a small house of 3 bedrooms and one bathroom and compared to two gatherings of five meeting in a large house with lots of space and lots of bathrooms.

The legislation is not consistent with what has come out of Boris's mouth (or backside depending on your view) and therein lies the issue. Had the matter been properly debated some of this may have been avoided. For now we wouldn't have more than 6 in our home.

@EarlGreyJenny this was what I posted on the other thread in relation to multiple gatherings in one house:

Any situation where people say 'but I could have a group of 9 and then 3 people could go into another room and say they were not part of the gathering' - that is clearly illegal. If you are one person in a house, and you invite over 8 people, and 3 are in one room and 6 in another, then no-one (i.e. a magistrate) is going to believe that no-one in the group of 6 met with the group of 3.

Here the situation is completely different. The groups will not meet, there is no intention to meet, and it is plausible that they didn't meet.

Take (another poster's) example of a house with 2 teenagers and an adult each hosting a group of 5. Could this be done? Well, possibly, if it was made very clear to everyone up front that there would be other people in the house that it was important they did not meet. If there were staggered start times, staggered end times, strict boundaries, separate toilets, and no one in fact met outside the groups.

Is someone going to believe that is what happened? Depends on circumstances. Ordinarily I would say no, because on receiving info that the house would be like that, it would be odd that some of the 15 people invited to the house would not offer to host, thus removing the need for so many people.

If on the other hand you told me the house was Chatsworth, that each group was meeting in a separate wing in order to decorate one specific room for Christmas, and had separate entrances, I would probably take a different view.

Maybe the law was drafted in order to deal with the fact that some people have very large houses? And possible very separate lives within that house?

Should you do it is obviously different again!

@OhTheRoses

If separate gatherings of more than six are allowed in the same domestic property surely risks are significantly different if two gatherings of five meet in a small house of 3 bedrooms and one bathroom and compared to two gatherings of five meeting in a large house with lots of space and lots of bathrooms.

The legislation is not consistent with what has come out of Boris's mouth (or backside depending on your view) and therein lies the issue. Had the matter been properly debated some of this may have been avoided. For now we wouldn't have more than 6 in our home.

This is a very good point. And this is criminal law - so the idea is not to criminalise except in specific situations. And you couldn't have one law for people with big houses and one for people with small, so my guess is that the wording is to allow for the fact that some people have big houses.

To take an extreme example, this law is made so that the Queen's live-in servants can each have one family member to visit without breaking the law.

@Whydoyouthinkthatthen

Thanks. What you say makes total sense, but I am interested in legal clarity. It would be perfectly feasible that I would have 5 friends over, as would my son and the 2 groups would not interact. To my mind though, it's breaking the rules but legally it must be ok if OP's situation is.

For the record, I wouldn't have anyone at all in my house because I live in Scotland and we're not allowed anyone at all.

Only the law is what we should follow. If you start to go on about spirit of it then part of the spirit is to enable things like dinners to ensure we can afford to pay the NHS wage bill and cure the sick just as much as the spirit being 70m people never leave their homes to stop this thing.

I have a fairly large 5000 sq foot home and an acre or 3/4 of land. I just had two men here to collect some boxes. They were right on the other side of my land by my second garage. They gathered in a sense with me outside although we all kept our distance. In the house is my student son. He no way under the letter of the law given he is asleep upstairs was gathering with the men. Everyone needs to keep reading the law www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/684/data.pdf.

Lat night my son's 2 local school friends were here. I was not gathered with them.
All these examples above are under 6 anyway but same would apply if my son had had 6 friends over (which he has not since lockdown by the way as we are being very careful).,

The moral of the thread is loads of people are utterly wrong about the law and might be reporting people to police about things that are legal and causing innocent law abiding neighbours loads of problems.

By the way Tory MPs are challenging the right of the Government to make laws like the rule of six amendments without Parliamentary authority and might even vote to abolish the rule of six in England shortly. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54115064 "Arbitrary powers without scrutiny"

While everyone happily goes on about having 7,8,9,... people in their house the country is plunging into another lockdown with deaths increasing exponentially. The cause, as we all know, is social mixing. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to play our part in helping stop this? The most effective way is to reduce the number of social contacts, not find clever ways of increasing it.

I have to have a feeling if the MN Stasi had been in control at the start of this we wouldn't be in the world-beating shitshow that we have sadly become. Elect a clown and you get a circus.

notevenat20 (hello again) I agree. And I hope everybody is. But possibly, reducing social contacts means being able to meet (legally, limiting gathering) with more than 6 people under one roof.

For example, if the alternative to having the gathering in the house (say, for example, a woman having 3 friends over while her 2 children are asleep and her husband is elsewhere in the house) is for her and the friends to go to the pub, what is the best situation?

Probably the best situation, is to do as the OP did on the other thread and end up meeting one friend only, outside! But this situation needs to be sustainable, and some people really feel the need to meet in person.

How about each student in a flat of 8 has 5 friends over for drinks? A mere 48 in a flat, but they've all arrived and are leaving at different times, and the rooms are en suite. Certainly not a party, it's just the 48 of them in their different groups. Would you tie yourselves in knots to pretend that's OK too?

You could take it in turns to temporarily die and be bought back to life so that at no point are their seven live bodies. Obviously the revival process may not always work, so it might be a bit Russian roulette... still technically a loophole!

But no.

Leaving aside the issue of whether student rooms (or bedrooms in general) are big enough for 6 unrelated people to socially distance.....
If the students each had 5 friends over at the same time, who didn't interact outside each gathering of 6, how would this be any different risk-wise from Student A having 5 friends round on Monday, Student B having 5 friends round on Tuesday, etc?

We are already in territory of leaving out family members from meet ups - seeing my sisters family In a pub 2 families of 4 so we each have to ditch one person ...found my heart sinking when teen dd announced her own plans fallen through and she would like to come after all...

No. The rule is 6. You will have 7. I get that it's ridiculous but surely you understand that 7 people is not 6?

It's different for several reasons:

1. air circulates in a house, people using a shared space such as hallway and staircase increases the risk of transmission
2. people are not uniformly infectious throughout the disease cycle, they may be much more infectious on Tuesday than Wednesday , meeting fewer people infected by that person if they meet 5 people each day than 10 on Tuesday
3. each person has an infection risk, add it together for the number of people so you get more likely that one will be infected and infectious
4. if one person infects 5, you have 6 cases; if one person infects 10 there are 11 cases, this is what causes exponential growth Remember this chart: