CHURCHES and other places of worship in England will be allowed to reopen for private individual prayer from Monday.

But weddings of any size, or full services, are not expected to be part of the reopening plans just yet.

Any individual churches, mosques, synagogues and temples reopening will have to manage the number of worshippers attending.

Robert Jenrick, communities secretary, said the opening of places for individual and private prayer would then be “a springboard, hopefully, conditional on the rate of infection, obviously, to small weddings and then, in time, to services”.

Mr Jenrick warned, though, that large gatherings will be difficult to manage for some time, particularly as some rituals - such as singing - would allow the virus to spread more freely.

Places of worship have been closed for almost two months, and in some cases even longer, after shutting their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Northern Ireland has already allowed private worship but Scotland and Wales have not yet done so.