Ways to celebrate Halloween and staying safe during COVID-19

Halloween is an annual highlight for many young people, especially children and families. There are still ways to make it fun and memorable while keeping safe by following safety guidelines.

Ways to have fun this Halloween

There are lots of things to keep the Halloween spirits up this year at home or in your garden with your family and support bubble.

• Pumpkin Carving is a great activity to do at home, why not have a competition with your friends and share results via Zoom, Google, or Skype.
• Decorate your own house and organise a spooky trail, you can find a lot of ideas on the CBBC website. Why not share pictures on social media with your friends?
• Organise a competition for most-scariest Halloween costume, perhaps organise someone to be a judge and award a prize for best efforts?
• Have a Halloween treasure hunt in your home and hide some treats and spooky surprises?
• Have a Halloween movie night at home. Even for every young child there are some family favourites.
• Bake some special Halloween treats, there are lots of Halloween inspired recipes on the BBC Good Food Website.

Halloween is a night of innocent fun for many, but for some residents, having an unexpected caller can be distressing and frightening.

Although we don't expect anyone will be trick or treating this year, we have produced a poster and are encouraging residents who do not wish to have Halloween callers, to display our 'no trick or treaters' poster on their door or in their front windows.

Whatever you do, remember to keep yourself, your friends, your family and our community safe by:

• Keeping to the rule of six outdoors only and remember hands, face, space.
• Maintaining physical distance from people you don't live with or are not in your support bubble.
• Remembering that the longer you are with other people the higher the risk.