Environment Agency waterways: Coronavirus (COVID-19) update April 2022
Updated 16 August 2022
Applies to England
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The government ended all of the remaining coronavirus restrictions in England on 24 February 2022 and released the ‘Living with COVID-19’ plan. Under this plan COVID-19 will be treated like other infectious diseases with vaccines remaining the first line of defence, supported by public health advice.
What this means for our waterways
While the national situation is changing, our priorities won’t. We will continue to focus on everyone’s health, safety and wellbeing; sustain our operations and incident resilience; and aim to emerge from the pandemic safely as a better organisation.
We will continue to ensure that all our sites and workplaces are safe. We have been reviewing how to operate and configure them in line with the latest government guidance.
Everyone is encouraged to continue to follow the public health advice to protect themselves and others: wash hands, let fresh air in when meeting indoors, wear a face covering in crowded and enclosed spaces where you come into contact with people you don’t normally meet.
All boating activity on our waterways should continue to follow government guidance carefully; and you should check GOV.UK to ensure that you are keeping yourselves and others safe.
Our service at this time
Throughout the pandemic our focus has been on keeping the public and our staff safe. That has not changed and we will continue to prioritise everyone’s health, safety and wellbeing.
Throughout the pandemic additional risk control measures have allowed our staff and customers to carry out their activities whilst minimising direct contact. Site-specific risk assessments mean we are expecting to keep some of these control measures in place at some of our sites.
As many of you who have been enjoying our waterways will know, these control measures have enabled our sites to remain operational and for us to support safe access to our waterways.
Please be aware that staff availability for assisted passage through locks, especially on the River Thames, may be affected by Covid case numbers among our teams at any time.
To keep up to date with local information, see the following websites:
We will now update our guidance only if government advice changes significantly, you can check the Environment Agency waterways: Coronavirus (Covid-19) update page for the most up-to-date information.