A BASINGSTOKE hotel is to be taken over by the government next week and transformed into a quarantine facility for travellers from high-risk countries, it has been revealed.

The Crowne Plaza on Old Common Road will close to the public on Sunday for the rest of the year, after owners signed an “exclusive contract” with the Department for

Health and Social Care to become a quarantine hotel for people arriving from red list countries.

A senior source confirmed it had been nominated as a quarantine facility, with the official confirmation expected after safety and facility checks are completed.

As a result, the hotel has been cancelling and rearranging all bookings, including weddings and other events, scheduled from Monday, July 26. It has left some couples anxious after plans for their big days, often already disrupted because of the pandemic, were thrown up in the air once more.

Travellers entering England from red list countries, which includes Brazil, South Africa, India and the United Arab Emirates, must quarantine in a government-managed hotel facility for ten days after their arrival, at a cost of £1,750 for one adult.

You can read the full story in this week’s edition of The Gazette. Also in this week's paper:

  • Hampshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner has said that ‘more needs to be done’ to support victims of crime as she was appointed to support them last week.
  • A Basingstoke physicist has discovered a young planetary system that could potentially change our understanding of how the universe and solar system works.
  • Basingstoke residents had mixed feelings as the final coronavirus restrictions came to an end on Monday as part of so-called ‘Freedom Day’
  • The county council are advertising for a new lollipop person outside a Basingstoke school, a week after a 10-year-old girl was hit by a car. 
  • A Basingstoke father-of-three who encouraged an undercover police officer he thought was a 14-year-old girl to perform a sex act on herself has avoided going to prison.
  • A popular running event is set to return to Basingstoke this weekend, after more than a year of cancellation due to the pandemic.
  • Eleven employees from a Basingstoke pub are isolating after a Covid-19 outbreak.
  • Staff at a Basingstoke GP surgery have been subjected to “high levels of abuse” by patients.
  • Leaseholders at three blocks of flats in Basingstoke which failed fire safety checks are set to be forced to pay out hundreds of thousands of pounds after more issues were found. Read the full exclusive report in tomorrow's paper.
  • PLUS: All the latest from Basingstoke Magistrates' Court.
  • Two pages of your letters to the editor.
  • Pictures: Sizzling summer sun in Basingstoke
  • The latest news from our communities.
  • An eight-page puzzle special.
  • Business news.
  • Three pages of entertainment news.
  • Four pages of sports news. And much more!

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