West Yorkshire to enter Tier 3 from midnight on Sunday
The whole of West Yorkshire will enter the highest level of lockdown from midnight on Sunday following a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield will all enter Tier 3 restrictions, meaning an extra 1.5m people will be placed under the toughest restrictions in the country, Leeds City council leader Judith Blake confirmed today.
The new restrictions, set to come into effect at 00.01 on Monday morning, will mean a ban on inter-household mixing both indoors and outdoors.
Pubs will be forced to shutter unless they serve a “substantial” meal. Betting shops, adult gaming centres, casinos and soft play centres must also shut under Tier 3 restrictions.
It comes after extensive talks between local leaders in West Yorkshire and central government over a financial settlement for the Tier 3 restrictions.
Bradford council leader Susan Hinchcliffe said yesterday the government was “unflinching in their resolve” to place the region under Tier 3 measures, but denied there was a “standoff”.
Hospital officials in the region yesterday said they have been forced to cancel routine operations, after numbers of Covid-19 patients on wards outweighed levels seen in the first wave of coronavirus.
Latest figures from Public Health England showed Leeds has a rate of 422.9 cases per 100,000 people — almost double the national average of 224 cases per 100,000.
More than 7.9m people in England are currently living under Tier 3 restrictions, after Liverpool, Greater Manchester and large swathes of Yorkshire entered the highest alert level last week.
A further 19.6m across England are living under Tier Two measures, meaning a ban on indoor household mixing.
The whole of Nottinghamshire will enter Tier 3 restrictions from midnight tonight. Council bosses said the sweeping changes were needed to “achieve a sustained reduction in infection rates” and “help protect our vulnerable residents, the NHS and social care services” in the region.
It comes after more than 50 Tory MPs on Tuesday lashed out at the Prime Minister, warning that Northern constituencies risk being left behind unless there is a clear strategy for leaving local lockdown restrictions.
MPs from parts of England currently under Tier 3 restrictions wrote to Boris Johnson to warn him that his “leveling up” agenda risks being undermined by crippling restrictions in the North.
“The virus has exposed in sharp relief the deep structural and systemic disadvantage faced by our communities and it threatens to continue to increase the disparity between the north and south still further,” the MPs said.
“Northern parts of our country were among the first to be significantly affected by the Covid outbreak, and now many communities have been put back under severe restrictions.”
Figures released today by the Department of Health and Social Care showed London currently has the highest R rate in the country, prompting fears of Tier 3 restrictions in the capital.
The rate of the spread of infection has catapulted to a best estimate of 2.9 in London, the highest rate in the country.
The authors of the report, compiled by Imperial College London and Ipsos More, warned: “The epidemic is now increasing most rapidly in the Midlands and South.
“Patterns of growth rate and the age distribution of cases in the South now are similar to those observed in northern regions during the prior two rounds of this study,” they said.