Covid: Pubs and restaurants will need to shut at 10.20pm

From Thursday pubs, cafes and restaurants in Wales must stop serving alcohol at 22:00 every night

Pubs and other licenced venues will have to shut at 22:20 in Wales under new rules confirmed on Thursday night.

It is 20 minutes later than First Minister Mark Drakeford announced on Tuesday.

Venues will need to stop selling alcohol at 22:00, under new rules aimed at tackling rising levels of coronavirus.

The law says people must be seated while eating and drinking, and while they are being served.

People must wear a face mask while not sitting down and licensed premises cannot reopen until 06:00 under a law that came into effect at 18:00 on Thursday.

The move means rules are now different to England, where pubs and restaurants must close at 22:00.

Earlier, Health Minister Vaughan Gething said the regulations would mean people needed to drink up and move on.

He said: "We do recognise that if you simply had businesses open as long as they wish to be then you could have people ordering lots of alcohol and carrying on drinking.

"And equally, from a business point of view, they'll want some certainty about when it needs to end so they don't have to manage that sort of behaviour themselves."

'Ongoing saga'

But he said the main cause of the virus spreading was people visiting other people's homes:

"This is still really about how we understand the way coronavirus is spreading," he said.

"It is still largely in people's homes, having more contact than we should do with more people.

"And then pubs, restaurants and licensed facilities can be an additional source of where it can go."

It emerged on Wednesday that premises would have to stop selling alcohol at 22:00, rather than close.

Dan Warder, who owns two restaurants in Tenby and Narbeth in Pembrokeshire, and is part of the Welsh Independent Restaurant Collective, told BBC Radio Wales it was "a little bit of a relief" to have clarity that 22:00 was for last orders rather than closing.

He said getting clarity on rules for the industry had been an "ongoing saga", adding: "It is an ever-changing landscape, there's lots of things we have to deal with at the moment and this is just another."