List of areas by Tier

[RedToothBrush]

For those of you struggling with the postcode look up:

Tier 1: Medium alert
South East
Isle of Wight
South West
Cornwall
Isles of Scilly
Tier 2: High alert
North West
Cumbria
Liverpool City Region
Warrington and Cheshire
Yorkshire
York
North Yorkshire
West Midlands
Worcestershire
Herefordshire
Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin
East Midlands
Rutland
Northamptonshire
East of England
Suffolk
Hertfordshire
Cambridgeshire, including Peterborough
Norfolk
Essex, Thurrock and Southend on Sea
Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes
London
all 32 boroughs plus the City of London
South East
East Sussex
West Sussex
Brighton and Hove
Surrey
Reading
Wokingham
Bracknell Forest
Windsor and Maidenhead
West Berkshire
Hampshire (except the Isle of Wight), Portsmouth and Southampton
Buckinghamshire
Oxfordshire
South West
South Somerset, Somerset West and Taunton, Mendip and Sedgemoor
Bath and North East Somerset
Dorset
Bournemouth
Christchurch
Poole
Gloucestershire
Wiltshire and Swindon
Devon
Tier 3: Very High alert
North East
Tees Valley Combined Authority:
Hartlepool
Middlesbrough
Stockton-on-Tees
Redcar and Cleveland
Darlington
North East Combined Authority:
Sunderland
South Tyneside
Gateshead
Newcastle upon Tyne
North Tyneside
County Durham
Northumberland
North West
Greater Manchester
Lancashire
Blackpool
Blackburn with Darwen
Yorkshire and The Humber
The Humber
West Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
West Midlands
Birmingham and Black Country
Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent
Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull
East Midlands
Derby and Derbyshire
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire
Leicester and Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
South East
Slough (remainder of Berkshire is tier 2: High alert)
Kent and Medway
South West
Bristol
South Gloucestershire
North Somerset

Source
www.gov.uk/guidance/full-list-of-local-restriction-tiers-by-area

I'm in Wiltshire, fairly rural county but hospitals covering the area are almost at capacity Bristol is tier 3 as both hospitals are maximum capacity in ICU The hospitals also cover areas of south glos and Somerset Bath and Wilts have both gone into tier 2 from tier 1

So we are Warwickshire/Oxfordshire borders which are T3 and T2. I do shopping in our nearest town which is T2.

Can I still continue? We are a small village and Oxfordshire border is 1 mile away

@MrsKoala

I’m so pissed off and disappointed to be in tier 3. I’m in east Kent with really low levels but because of Thanet and Swale we have this. For the first time I really feel like giving up. I just can’t be bothered with Christmas or making an effort.

Snap. Everyone on the local Facebook group is furious and blaming Thanet for it all. Cases in my town are rising fast now and the few times I've been out people have got more and more blasé about wearing masks and mixing households. I think there was an element of "oh well they're doing it in Margate!"

@unchienandalusia

They have to put London as one as people don't just stay in their borough. Also whilst you might be rural with low numbers if your nearest city or town has higher numbers many will be travelling too and fro for work etc. I just don't think they can get this so granular.

We're SE. V low cases (lowest In Surrey and consistently so) but have moved up to tier 2. Gutted but c'est la vie.

I don’t think many people travel from Tunbridge Wells to Swale or Thanet for work. They are much more likely to travel to London or East Sussex. Our nearest towns and hospitals have low numbers.

My quiet little rural village is in Tier 3. Because of high rates of Covid in other parts of the county I think.

@Bathroom12345

So we are Warwickshire/Oxfordshire borders which are T3 and T2. I do shopping in our nearest town which is T2.

Can I still continue? We are a small village and Oxfordshire border is 1 mile away

Yes. Ideally they don't want you to cross the border but legally its fine and in practical terms there may be many people for whom its not viable to change where you shop.

@Longwhiskers14

The key difference is that London has far better hospital capacity than Northern areas, London has always had far better investment than the North.

Not going to dispute the bit about investment, but in the context of Covid it's not that we have better hospital capacity, we're just not filling the beds right now despite our 9m population. It's got nothing to do with how good or not our hospitals are (and there are amazing ones up north, like in Liverpool), people just aren't getting hospitalised in the same volume because we're largely sticking to the rules and that's played a big part in us being in tier 2 now.

But I'm going to bow out now, I don't want to cause a row. Posters may hate London and hate Londoners and think we're the root of all evil in the UK, but we're human too and we're struggling in this pandemic as well and have been since March when we got really clobbered hard. I haven't seen my parents since Sept nor hugged them since Feb.

I wish this nightmare is over soon for everyone.

Your argument makes absolutely no sense. You don’t get Covid worse by not sticking to the rules... you avoid Covid altogether by sticking to the rules. Covid doesn’t know whether you’ve visited your parents or gone to the pub and decide to pay you back by hospitalising you.

There are likely to be less hospitalisations due to a younger population and general better health (due to having better access to better hospitals and generally more wealth.)

So what about going to a restaurant in T2 which is 2 miles from us?

Although it’s not suitable for everyone there will be people on the fringes who have been caught up in this. I heard someone from
Blackpool talking earlier about hospitality in the area.I feel desperately sorry for them.

Tier 3. I'm devastated. This essentially means we've had only two weeks out of lockdown since March.

The cases in my area are minimal abs have been throughout but because we have an Oldham postcode we're screwed.
I feel so sorry for our local pubs and restaurants. They won't survive this.

@Bathroom12345

So what about going to a restaurant in T2 which is 2 miles from us?

Although it’s not suitable for everyone there will be people on the fringes who have been caught up in this. I heard someone from
Blackpool talking earlier about hospitality in the area.I feel desperately sorry for them.

You are strongly advised not to. The restuarant would be within their rights to turn you away if they take your details before/on arrival.

But no there isn't anything legal to stop it.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure this is how the virus spread outside Greater Manchester at one point when the city was in restrictions and you weren't allowed to meet other households if you lived there. What was happening instead was that people were making booking to met friends and family just over the border. I was very aware of lots of people doing it, and it was deeply frustrating.

This is precisely one of the reasons why some people living in areas with low numbers of cases next to places with very high rates have been placed in a tier perhaps higher than it otherwise should have been.

Knowing that people from T3 are deliberately avoiding the rules by doing this, and therefore putting other places at risk builds resentment and anger. It also potentially endangers someone's business.

It is taking the piss. No matter how much anyone protests. Especially since its not as if youve been in restrictions in that areas for long like in other places in the country.

@Bonkerz

I don't know what this means for ex seeing the kids. Both counties in tier 3. He's not my bubble because I work from home with a friend who is my bubble otherwise she wouldn't have a job.

Why do you think it'll be any different than it has been since March? Children have been allowed to move freely between their parents homes the whole time haven't they? Why would that change now?

@LadyCatStark

I’m so fucking angry. We have 152.6 cases per 100000 and we’re in tier 3. How can they justify that? Lancaster has even less with 92! But there’s no north, south divide though oh no...

There are FIVE criteria, not just 1. It's been clearly laid out. Try reading it before kicking off.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

According to local figures, cases are dropping rapidly locally. Yet it moves from Tier 1 to Tier 3...

You need to look at ALL the criteria they're using. 5 different things, not just 1.

@WitchesBritchesPumpkinPants yes, which they’ve applied to our county as a whole, so we’re suffering for the situation in Preston, Blackburn etc. Our MP has been in the House of Commons and Sky News this week explaining why we should be in tier 2 and Lancashire County Council and Lancaster City Council have written to the Government to explain why we are different to South Lancashire but it’s been completely ignored. If there is any issue with our local hospitals it certainly hasn’t been communicated.

[quote Hayeahnobut]@Longwhiskers14 It is a North South divide though, as it has been since day one. We locked down in March despite cases in the Midlands and the North being very low. Now we have many areas with lower than national average figures, but they're in Tier 3. The key difference is that London has far better hospital capacity than Northern areas, London has always had far better investment than the North.

I don't begrudge people living in lower tiers at all, but to suggest there is not a disparity in treatment is naive.[/quote]
Oh FGS.

STOP Droning on about London v North isn't helping anyone.

Hospital capacity is what it is at this point in time and that's what needs to be taken into consideration at this point in time.

Plus I expect age is probably a factor. There are probably more over 65's in other areas.

You need to accept that hospital spaces 'are what they are' and that everywhere has been decided by the same criteria.

It's not a north v south decision.

@Borntobeamum absolutely! It gives me no confidence that the government has looked at the case numbers in our region and made an informed decision, when they haven’t included our very large county anywhere in the list of tiers.

Can you imagine them forgetting Surrey? Or deciding to group Berkshire and Hampshire together under the name Hamptonshire?

How does locking down parts of the north preserve London then? I'd be really interested to know.

They are protecting/ preserving London’s ECONOMY by placing it into tier 2 instead of tier 3.
Everywhere else can go to hell.

@TurquoiseDragon

Pisses me off a bit really. I live in a town that had managed to remain in Tier 1 until this current lockdown, and now we are being lumped into the rest of the county and pushed into Tier 3.

Have they changed the 'zoning' (for want of a better word) for where you live?

I think it is unfortunate that towns like yours have been 'caught' in a situation like this, but I suppose they need to keep the area quite large or it would be far too complicated and the lower areas would end up not so low any more with people moving in & out of it. Shopping there etc.

Hopefully the vaccines will be here soon and we can start to put some of these restrictions behind us.

They haven’t used hospital capacity to decide tiers. If they had they’d have put the areas served by each hospital in different tiers. I’m in a tier 3 area. My 3 closest hospitals are all in tier 2 areas, and I live rurally so the furthest of those is a long way away! No ambulance would ever take me to the hospital in “my” tier 3 area.

Thanks Red

I would rather we were in Tier 3, as we're in 2 but sandwiched by two distinctive Tier 3 areas.
Newsflash: People have cars and will travel.
We're going to have increased hospital cases because of this.

@WitchesBritchesPumpkinPants did you not just see me post that there’s no issue with our hospital spaces. None. I live here, I know that. I bet you’ve never even bloody been up north.

@angelofthenorth72

So annoyed. The whole of Lancashire has been bundled into Tier 3 despite the fact that cases are falling in every area except Hyndburn and Lancashire council leaders had made a case to have boroughs in the north and west of the county (e.g. Fylde, Wyre, Lancaster) in Tier 2 and East Lancs in Tier 3.

I understand your frustration, but the problem is that when they do that people say they're 'confused' and they travel to get the benefits of the lower tiers and spread it more.

@Bonkerz

I don't know what this means for ex seeing the kids. Both counties in tier 3. He's not my bubble because I work from home with a friend who is my bubble otherwise she wouldn't have a job.

I presume children carry on seeing both parents.

@pipnchops

Why is south west on all three lists? That's a big area, some parts of which are in tiers 1, 2 and 3?

My questions is what if you work /go to school in place that falls in a different tier to the one you live in. Which rules do you follow?

It's listed underneath the headings which parts are in each tier.

If you travel from a lower area to a higher area for work etc then you have to abide by the tighter restrictions in the area you are in

Other than for work/school/hospital/care type 'essential' travel, people should be staying in their own areas.