From next Monday you will be allowed to meet another household inside your own home for the first time this year.
All council areas in Scotland are expected to move from level three to at least level two from Monday, May 17.
The change in restrictions coincides with the news that the Covid-19 alert level in the UK has been downgraded after a "consistent" fall in cases, hospital admissions and deaths.
These changes will mean that you will be allowed to meet indoors, including homes, as long as you stick to the restrictions.
Here's what you need to know:
Meeting in homes
The maximum number of people who can meet indoors socially in a home is four which can be from two households, including for overnight stays.
Children under the age of 12 do not count towards the total number of people or households meeting outside but do count towards household numbers indoors
Children under 12 do not need to maintain physical distance from others.
When you meet people from another household indoors you should:
- Minimise the number of meetings you have with people from other households each day.
- Stay at least two metres apart from anyone who is not part of your household.
- Maintain hand and cough hygiene.
- Avoid touching hard surfaces with your hands.
- Wash your hands when you arrive, when you leave, when you get home and especially before eating or after touching surfaces.
- Not sharing food or utensils.
- Keep rooms well ventilated, if possible – consider opening windows or a door.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here