Fines issued after police crash house party with 30 people celebrating

Footage shows around 30 revellers, believed to be from Edge Hill University, attending the house party in Wigan Road, Ormskirk.

Officers attended the incident at around 2.45am on Sunday (January 31).

Several people left the property when police arrived - including some out of a window - but the organiser of the party, a woman aged in her 20s, was found and will be fined £10,000.

Officers also located nine party-goers and they were all given an £800 fine.

The action followed a new law which came into force at the weekend - part of the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations – which now allows officers to issue the increased fine to anybody attending a house party of 15 people or more.

Officers also arrested a man after an officer was pushed while speaking to attendees. Sam Taiwo, 23, of Bellhouse Road, Sheffield, has since been charged with assaulting a police officer and is due at Preston Magistrates’ Court on April 1.

Supt Karen Edwards, of Lancashire Police, described the students as selfish.

She said: “This weekend new Coronavirus regulations were introduced, enabling police to issue increased fines to those in attendance at larger house parties. Officers who attended the party in Ormskirk used these powers, and as a result several fixed penalty notices were given out.

“This party was a blatant breach of the current restrictions, which are in place to prevent the virus from spreading and to keep everybody safe. It is unbelievably selfish for anyone to believe they are exempt when so many law-abiding citizens have not seen their friends and family properly in almost a year. The people in attendance also gave no thought to the safety of the local community or the officers who had to attend to break up the gathering, not to mention the NHS which is under immense strain. It is also shocking that an officer reported being assaulted while dealing with the aftermath of the event.

“While we are continuing to spend most of our time dealing with crime and keeping people safe, we must stress that incidents like this take us away from that and take up officers’ valuable time. We have always taken a proportionate approach to breaches of the regulations – educating, explaining and engaging first, with enforcement as a last resort - but when people blatantly break the rules, as with this party, we have to take it seriously and take a firmer approach.

“As always, we would like to say a huge thankyou to those who are following the law and are doing their bit to keep everybody safe. We all want lockdown to end, and for normality to resume, and we are grateful to the majority who are working with us to make that happen.”

Over the weekend, police received a total of 517 calls about Covid-19 breaches across Lancashire and 181 tickets were issued.

The majority of the incidents were house parties, checks on behalf of the Border Agency and businesses not complying with the regulations.

Temporary chief inspector for West Lancashire, Chris Abbott: “We have a tactical policing plan in place with additional officers who will be proactive in dealing with breaches of covid legislation.

"We will continue to enforce any breaches and work closely with our partners to take appropriate action.”

A spokesman for Edge Hill University said: “We are fully co-operating and working closely with the police to establish the details. This is completely unacceptable behaviour and we will be taking appropriate action in line with our disciplinary procedures. We cannot pre-empt the outcome of these investigations or predict any final sanctions that might be imposed, however the University is able to exclude students in the most serious cases.

Anyone who wants to report a suspected breach of the regulations can visit: doitonline.lancashire.police.uk