Reports of potential Covid breaches have 'gone through the roof' since the start of the third lockdown, say Falmouth police.

At a meeting of Falmouth Town Council on Monday night, PC Matt Cummins told councillors that Covid-19 calls were increasing.

His report came as seven people were fined £1,400 for travelling to Cornwall during the lockdown, to rent a house and have a celebration in the Mawnan Smith/Helford area.

Police say they were called to a rural property in the Falmouth area after receiving a report of a possible Covid regulations breach at around 11.20pm on Saturday, January 16. Officers attended and the fines were issued at around 9am the following morning.

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“We are beginning to see Covid-19 reporting for second homes, gatherings, problem areas that’s starting to really go through the roof for us,” said PC Cummins.

“Safeguarding and engagement was one of our main roles in the neighbourhood team. "With Covid-19, vulnerabilities, isolation doesn’t go well with mental health and safeguarding so through this pandemic some of the problems we are dealing with on a day to day basis it’s not good for our community. "

"So we are trying to increase contact with our vulnerable individuals our key clientele, the people we deal with on a monthly basis.”

In reply to a question from Councillor David Saunby about gatherings on beaches and beauty spots around Falmouth, PC Cummings told councillors there are the same number of police officers as there were at the beginning of Covid-19 and that they were doing everything they could in relation to enforcement.

“The difficulty is the government guidelines are ‘don’t travel too far for your exercise or indeed from your town’, and, with the population of 27 to 30,000, our beauty spots are gonna snag. But we will do our utmost to be present.”

He added: "Our resilence is always going to be tested with the Covid-19 strand. We have been very lucky in Falmouth we have got quite strict social distancing within the station, mask wearing so we have been doing quite well with lack of abstractions, however being a service that's Cornwall wide if another station has issues other officers are drawn in from other stations to fill up those resource holes."