Shoppers flocked to DIY stores including Homebase and B&Q this morning, with "crazy" long queues pictured up and down the country.
DIY giant B&Q reopened more than 150 stores this weekend, despite the majority of high street chains keeping their doors shut.
B&Q has been closed since the end of March although customers have been able to use click and collect services to purchase goods.
Hardware stores have been classed as ‘essential’ during the coronavirus crisis, but some fear more stores reopening may cause people to flout lockdown restrictions and go on non-essential journeys.
One carer from York said she had “never seen anything like it” after visiting her local branch to pick up new light bulbs for a 98-year-old lady she looks after.
She said she saw shoppers leaving the stores with barbecues and gardening items.
Tracey Sharp, 53, told Yorkshire Live: "The queues have been round the car park. It's just crazy. I've never seen anything like it.
"I go past every single day and it's just packed whatever time of the day.
"Yesterday it was all round the car park. That was at 9am and again at 11am."
A video filmed by Tracey at 10am today shows the extent of queues outside the store in Hull Road.
"It's not quite as bad as yesterday, but people are still going crazy because it's gardening season and the weather is nice," she said.
"I've been here 10 minutes, but I reckon it will take me an hour and a half to get in. There are about 50 people here. The queue is just getting longer and longer."
Not all sections of B&Q stores have fully reopened including kitchen and bathroom design, paint mixing and timber and key cutting.
The chain has introduced a number of changes to help shoppers adhere to social distancing guidelines, which includes limiting the number of customers in the stores at any one time and installing screens at checkouts.
However Health Secretary Matt Hancock said hardware stores such as B&Q were “never required to close in the first place”.
He welcomed the move and said it was fine as long as they could stick to social distancing guidelines.
He told Sky News: "The things that are restarting are things that we never required to close in the first place, but what the companies have been doing is working out how they can have safe working following the social distancing rules whilst people are at work.
"Throughout we've allowed hardware stores to stay open, and the construction industry, but what businesses have been doing is taking the last couple of weeks to work out 'ok how do you stay open and stay within the social-distancing rules at work?'
"So it's absolutely fine for those businesses to stay open because they were never required to close by the social-distancing rules."
