People continue to flout lockdown rules to celebrate birthdays, meet friends for a beer, and drive to North Yorkshire for a glass of wine, despite UK Covid-19 death toll passing 126,000

Officers attended numerous reports of people breaking rules this weekend, including a 20th birthday party with attendees hiding in a garden shed, a young couple visiting the coast on a 150-mile round trip, and a Doncaster man who drove his camper-van to Filey for a glass of wine.

Superintendent Mike Walker, who is leading the force's response to the pandemic, has pledged to tackle rule breakers as the country heads into Easter and beyond.

He said: "The National Day of Reflection is a profound and poignant time for everyone who has lost family members and friends to Covid-19 in our area and around the country.

"Every-day life, which we have taken for granted for so long, has been completely turned on its head during the past year.

"We’ve all had to adapt to stringent health protection measures to reduce the spread of the virus in the collective effort to keep our loved-ones safe, particularly those in the most vulnerable groups.

"From a policing point of view, we continue to play our part in this effort to keep people safe and protect the NHS, whose staff have been nothing short of heroic on the frontline of the pandemic.

"My plea to everyone is to be extremely careful and to keep following the regulations until it is safe to resume a more normal way of living – we have come too far and made too many sacrifices for this effort to be wasted now.

"We owe it to our medical and care professionals, to everyone who has suffered loss and hardship during the last 12 months, and to the people who have tragically lost their lives to the coronavirus."

Supt Walker confirmed that patrol plans will reflect any changes in legislation post March 29, as part of the Government's roadmap out of lockdown.

"Also, we expect normal policing demand to increase as the regulations are further relaxed, therefore North Yorkshire Police will utilise the Government’s surge funding provided to ensure we can respond to the public as they would expect."

Here is a list of Covid-19 breaches North Yorkshire Police attended over the weekend:

Officers in Scarborough responded to a report at 1.21am on Sunday, of a suspected indoor gather taking place at Eastfield. When they called at the address it turned out to be a woman’s 20th birthday party and three of the attendees attempted to hide from the police in a back garden shed. The officers issued seven Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs).

Further down the coast at Filey Country Park it turned out to be a busy Saturday night for officers on patrol.

At 11.10pm they spotted a Ford Fiesta in the car park with a young couple inside who were on a 150-mile round trip from Gainsborough, North Lincolnshire, without any reasonable excuse to travel under the current lockdown

Then at 11.15pm, a group of four men from Bradford, West Yorkshire, were found to have travelled to the park in a Ford Focus with the intention of having a bonfire and having a few beers. The men were sent home after being issued with FPNs

Officers then noticed a Ducati camper-van at the same location at 11.30pm. The occupant, a man from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, told them that he’d had a glass of wine could not drive home

At 4.33pm on Saturday at Selby, officers were called to a report of a gathering in a back garden. The group of six – five men and a woman – were having a barbeque and mixing with different households. They were all handed FPNs.

Lastly, at 3.50pm on Friday, on the southbound A168 on the outskirts of Thirsk, a man from London was pulled over in a Mercedes saloon car. As well as being uninsured for the vehicle, it turned out the man had been visiting friends in Middlesbrough for a couple of days without reasonable excuse under the current health protection regulation – a 500-mile round journey. He was issued with a FPN and the vehicle was seized.