Parents have been barred from attending their children’s graduation ceremonies after Imperial College London insisted on enforcing “safety first” social distancing, despite all restrictions having been scrapped.

The Russell Group university, which has been a leading authority on Covid-19 modelling throughout the pandemic, is one of the last UK institutions to still be sticking to the rules, while large concerts and events continue as normal.

Imperial College said guests were barred from attending graduands’ ceremonies in the Royal Albert Hall this month “in the interest of safety”, because “cases of Covid are still prevalent in the UK”.

This meant that parents were only able to watch the ceremonies, held on March 30 and March 10, via livestreams.

Many parents, some of whom had travelled from overseas to attend, resorted to watching these livestreams from nearby cafés or their hotel rooms.

Alexander Grace, 24, graduated from his civil engineering degree on March 30 while his mother and step-father, Lesley Grace and Stephen Radcliffe, were forced to watch the ceremony on a “little screen” from their Wembley hotel room.

They had travelled from Nottinghamshire to be with Mr Grace, who had deferred his graduation last year in the hope of attending an in-person ceremony with his family this year.

They only recently discovered that they would not be able to watch the Royal Albert Hall ceremony in person and were frustrated by the situation.

“They’ve done their degree through difficult circumstances during Covid,” Ms Grace said. “It’s something that’s a big moment in Alex’s life and it matters hugely to us – we wanted to share it with him in the best way possible, and that would’ve been being there and watching him physically.”

Mr Radcliffe added: “It’s a big place, isn’t it. It’s not like they couldn’t fit us in.”

Ms Grace said it put her son Alexander in a “difficult position”, because “he wanted us there and he wanted to share that moment and so it’s not ticked the box for him either”.