MCDONALD'S has announced that it will close all its restaurants in the UK and Ireland from 7pm tonight Monday, following concerns about maintaining safe social distancing.

There are approximately 1,300 McDonald's restaurants in the UK and Ireland and the decision will affect 135,000 staff members.

Paul Pomroy, chief executive of McDonald's UK & Ireland, said he was "proud" of employees who had taken "every step" to keep customers safe.

"We have not taken this decision lightly and know that our restaurants have been playing an important role in the community providing hundreds of thousands of free drinks to frontline health and social workers and emergency services personnel," he said.

"But I have been clear throughout this that we would only continue to operate whilst it was safe for our people and together with our franchisees, we feel now is the time to make this decision to temporarily close.

"I want to thank every single one of our 135,000 employees. I am so proud of them all for adapting so quickly to a constantly evolving work environment, taking every step to keep our customers, couriers and teams safe and looking after each other so very well."

Mr Pomroy added it had "become clear that maintaining safe social distancing whilst operating busy takeaway and Drive Thru restaurants [was] increasingly difficult".

Late on Sunday evening, Nando's said it would be closing more than 400 restaurants in the UK.

In a post on Twitter, the company said: "The health and safety of our customers and team is our highest priority.

"We have decided that the best course of action right now is to temporarily close our restaurants until further notice.