Has anyone come across guidance on whether households or support bubbles (e.g. two people from one household working in the same place) are applicable for social distancing in the workplace? At the moment all our people are working from home, but the question has popped up for the future.

Social distancing rules for support bubbles say they do not have to distance from one another but doesn't mention working, just social contexts.

Govt guidelines state that everyone should be socially distanced where possible in the workplace, or have additional controls in place. There's no mention of exceptions for support bubbles etc.

I'm working on the basis that this means these bubbles don't apply in the workplace and therefore everyone needs to socially distance when on site. I'm excluding HSE "workplace bubbles" here because they don't have the same purpose or exemptions for distancing.

I think distancing everyone is by far the simplest approach, and avoids lots of exemptions and mixed messages but, for education purposes, is there anything out there that contradicts this?

Thanks

I would suspect that it is down to the business and their COVID "risk assessment".

Our business has a lot of friends and family working here. We tend to allow people who live together to "relax" the social distancing rules together. We find it beneficial as it reduces the risks involved when it comes to such things as team lifts. As you note, workplace bubbles (i.e. ensuring that certain groups don't mix at all with other groups within the wokplace) are already a recommended "control". Therefore it makes sense to try and put families together in these bubbles.

We recently had a non-HSE "HSE" inspector come to our premises to check we were doing what we needed to, and he was happy with this.

As a side note, the only thing he wanted improving on was the removal of disposable cups at the water fountains/cooler, which had me puzzled. Surely the cooler was the transmission risk, not single use, disposable cups?

We have allowed this for a husband and wife team in a warehouse with plenty of space but we had a small workforce present at the time so was easy to manage. It will  be a challenge if people do not know that they are a bubble, it will possibly reinforce non compliance of other measures as there are mixed messages and make compliance challenging. I was happy in the specific circumstance where everyone knew everyone, very low numbers in the workplace (about 10) but I would not encourage in larger settings such as our head office.

I agree, last year everyone seemed to be in a bubble with everyone, unfortunately so where their familes and friends, therefore the bubble didnt do its job.