The government has reimposed “crude, blanket” lockdown restrictions on half a million people in Greater Manchester just 12 hours after they were lifted after a rise in infections.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, said Trafford and Bolton would remain under enhanced restrictions banning gatherings in homes and gardens “following a significant change in the level of infection rates over the last few days”.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, welcomed the change of heart but warned confusing local lockdowns were “becoming less and less effective”.
Fewer than half of the 305 fines given to people in Greater Manchester for breaking restrictions between March and May had been paid, according to Burnham’s deputy, Beverley Hughes, who said it showed lockdowns were “losing credibility”.
“The restrictions on family gatherings in houses and gardens is resented by the public, who see it as inconsistent with being allowed to mix with family and friends in a pub garden, and is virtually impossible to police,” she said.
“These crude blanket restrictions can only be an interim measure,” Burnham said, calling for “a much more sophisticated, more targeted approach”.
There has not yet been a reallocation of test-and-trace resources from the national to local level yet, despite government promising to redeploy 6,000 workers, he said, insisting: “We need to build a local test-and-trace operation that goes door to door.”
The decision came after Bolton’s Conservative-run council and Trafford’s Labour administration both wrote to Hancock on Tuesday to ask him not to lift restrictions as planned on Wednesday. But it was announced at noon on Wednesday, 12 hours after the restrictions were widely believed to have been lifted, causing confusion and dismay.
Chris Green, the Conservative MP for Bolton West, said he was “disappointed” at the U-turn.
“Despite what I and local press understood, Bolton is being kept in local lockdown. I’m disappointed at how this important decision has been communicated because of the impact this will have on people’s lives,” he tweeted.
Hancock said the decision was made in collaboration with local leaders. “We continually monitor outbreaks across the country, and have seen infection rates increase more than three times in Bolton in under a week, and double in Trafford since the last review,” he said.
The latest data for Bolton, from 30 August, shows the weekly incidence rate is now at 66.6 cases per 100,000. This compares with 18.9 per 100,000 between 17 and 23 August. In Trafford, there are 36.8 cases per 100,000 people, up from 17.8 per 100,000.
Andrew Western, the leader of Trafford council, said: “I don’t call this a win. We all want restrictions out as soon as possible and proper funding for hyper local action. I take no pleasure in seeing increased cases. We should never have been put in this mess in the first place; this has massively damaged public confidence in measures,” he tweeted.
On Tuesday Western wrote to Hancock to complain that his authority’s health officials had been overruled to appease Tory MPs in what he describe as a “haphazard and nakedly political approach”.
In a letter, he told the health secretary Trafford’s infection rate had increased 100% over the past week and that its representations, urging for restrictions to be kept in place for at least two weeks to allow the safe opening of schools, had been “completely ignored”.
The area’s sole Tory MP, Graham Brady, the influential chair of the Conservatives’ 1922 Committee, had wanted the measures to be eased.
Residents of Bolton and Trafford will now remain under the same restrictions as those in nearby Salford, Manchester, Rochdale, Bury and Tameside – which all have lower rates of infection.
People in the Greater Manchester borough of Stockport, as well as Burnley and Hyndburn in Lancashire, were freed from the restrictions on Wednesday following the decision announced by Hancock last Friday.
The measures, imposed on 31 July, have also been lifted in parts of Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees in West Yorkshire.
Burnham said the debacle showed “the way the government has been running things, sitting in Whitehall imposing decisions on local areas, has to stop. We can’t have that any more. It isn’t working. It’s confusing people, it’s causing anger and resentment, we need to move now to a new, more sophisticated approach as soon as we possibly can.”
