Scarborough house parties lead to 14 fines in a weekend

Scarborough's infection rate has been falling but on 11 November it was the second-highest in England

Police have said it is "shocking" they had to issue 14 fines over four illegal house parties in Scarborough.

The parties at the weekend all breached tier two regulations which ban household mixing indoors.

Covid-19 infection rates in the resort, which were high just a few weeks ago, have been falling in recent days.

Ch Insp Rachel Wood said: "To see people having parties and jeopardising that progress is really quite shocking."

She added: "It's really concerning to see the number of fixed penalty notices we have had to issue this weekend, especially considering that it was only a few weeks ago that Scarborough had some of the highest infection rates in the UK.

"Residents, the local authority and our policing teams have all worked so hard to get the infection rates down."

She urged people to adhere to the rules and "not gather indoors with anyone who is not from your own household".

"I realise people want to get their lives back to normal and want to see friends and family - we all do," she said.

"However, if we all rush out and ignore the regulations, we are going to end up back at square one."

On 11 November, Scarborough's infection rate stood at 611 per 100,000 population and was the second-highest in England at that time.

But that rate fell to 162.7 in the seven days to 3 December.

The force said it also handed out three fixed penalty notices over the weekend to people who visited Whitby from the Cleveland area, breaching their tier three restrictions.

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