Tighter coronavirus restrictions that have been imposed in parts of the north-west of England have caused widespread confusion, leading to one police force making a plea for members of the public not to call 999 asking for clarification.
Residents in Oldham, along with parts of Pendle and Blackburn, will not be allowed to socialise with anyone from outside their household as of midnight on Saturday. Workplaces, childcare facilities and businesses, including restaurants and pubs, will remain open, however, leading to questions about how the new restrictions will be policed.
Other areas in the north-west including six parts of Greater Manchester are on the government’s “watch list” of places where the number of coronavirus cases is a cause for concern.
The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, told Sky News the government’s test-and-trace system was failing and this was the reason for the recent rise in cases.
Citing a report that shows the test-and-trace system is reaching only half of the people who have been in contact with somebody who has been infected with coronavirus in the 20 most-affected areas of the country, he said: “The question you have to ask is: Why is it so low in the places where we need it to be highest?”
Burnham added that it was “not fair for the government to threaten these places with a lockdown, when they aren’t doing some of the basic things that could be done to help those communities manage the spread of this virus”.
On Saturday, Greater Manchester police tweeted: “Please do not call 101 or 999 for clarification on Covid-19 regulations.”
The police force also issued several social media posts about parties and gatherings that officers had to break up on Friday evening.
These include a wedding party with more than 30 people at a private address in Rochdale, a house party in Oldham attended by more than 30 teenagers, a gathering of more than 50 people in Middleton and a children’s birthday party in a garden in Swinton which was attended by people from three different families.
Officers also attended a property in Blackley where 12 people gathered in a private garden were dispersed and issued a fixed penalty notice. The group told officers they were unsure of current restrictions in the north-west as they were not local to Greater Manchester, according to the tweet.
The Labour leader of Pendle council, Mohammed Iqbal, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme his borough had in effect been split into two by the new restrictions, which had caused confusion.
He said: “The government has announced these tightening restrictions for local people in my area, yet they have not issued any detailed guidance as to how it will operate, who will police it. So local people are actually more confused than they were on Thursday evening.”
He said the restrictions, which the council argued against, had been imposed to “punish people who have been testing flat out”.
Meanwhile, the Oldham council leader, Sean Fielding, said the local authority had more enforcement capacity to take action against people breaking the rules. He told BBC Breakfast that at least one pub had been closed in the past 24 hours.
He said: “Part of our discussions with government which helped us to avert the kind of economic lockdown of the kind in Leicester was a pledge around increasing the capacity in our enforcement teams so that we could take action where we had reports of businesses or premises or households not following the rules.
“So when we receive those reports we now have additional capacity around enforcement and compliance to take action, whether it’s fines, whether it’s closure orders or whatever. We have closed at least one pub in the last 24 hours.”
He added that the local authority was enlisting the help of celebrities to get the new coronavirus restriction messages across. Fielding said it had recruited Azhar Ali, the Pakistan cricket captain, and the actor James Buckley, who played Jay in the TV series The Inbetweeners.
He said: “We are also doing some really targeted intervention in our most affected communities, and that includes things like door-to-door testing, using community leaders to get messages over that so far the corporate council communications channels have not been as successful [at promoting] as we would like.”
Cases in Oldham reached 103.1 per 100,000 people during the week ending 13 August, with Blackburn and Pendle reaching 95.3 and 75.5 cases per 100,000 people respectively.
