A council has deployed a drone to establish if residents are complying with social distancing alongside a seaside promenade.
Portsmouth City Council used the unmanned device to capture footage along Southsea seafront to identify any problem areas.
Gerald Vernon-Jackson, the Liberal Democrat council leader, said that the images showed that people were mostly obeying the two-metre distancing rules but there were “pinch points” near cafes and the entrance to the pier.
He said the council planned to remove some benches in these areas as well as pavement advertising boards to provide more space and to discourage people from sitting down next to the cafes.
Mr Vernon-Jackson said: “What we wanted to do was look down the seafront because we have lots of people saying that there were too many people on the seafront.
“What it showed was people were behaving very sensibly and very well but there were some pinch points where there were groups of people and we needed to work on a strategy so those pinch points are not dangerous so people can continue to use the promenade to get their exercise all the way down its length.”
He added: “When you stand on the prom it looks much more full than if you are looking from above where you can see the distances and people were keeping the two metres apart.”
He said that the drones did not invade the privacy of the public because “we can’t identify people, we can’t see anyone up close, it was just to get an idea how safe or unsafe it was for people”.
Mr Vernon-Jackson said only a “couple” of benches would be removed next to cafes to enable compliance with rules which ban people from sitting outside cafes and added that “thousands” of other benches would remain in use.
