News
What actually counts as your ‘local area’ during this lockdown
The guidance has confused some people
Under the new lockdown you can only leave your home for a few reasons and must remain local – but what counts as local?
The guidance for the third national lockdown calls for the public to ‘stick to your local area’ and to otherwise ‘stay home’ unless for one of a few essential reasons.
The possible reasons you can leave your home include going to work where it is impossible to work from home, to shop for necessities, to exercise, to provide care or attend medical appointments.
However, one of those reasons is providing a bit of confusion among the public, with two women even being fined £200 each for going on their daily walk.
The government guidance states that outdoor exercise should be limited to once a day and remain in your ‘local area’.
You can exercise outdoors alone, with your household, your support bubble, child care bubble or with one other person from another household (to make a maximum of two people).
But two Derbyshire women were fined after driving five miles to exercise at Foremark Reservoir during the lockdown in two separate cars.
The duo claims the police told them their hot drinks counted as a picnic. Derbyshire Police defended their decision, explaining that driving for exercise was ‘not in the spirit’ of lockdown.
The government guidance states that your local area is limited to ‘your village, town or the part of a city where you live’.
You can visit outdoor places such as parks, beaches, countryside accessible to the public, forests, public gardens, the grounds of a heritage site and playgrounds for your daily exercise.
However this should be done locally where possible, but you can travel a short distance within your own area to do so if necessary, for example, to access to an open space.
Commuters could be facing the steepest rise in the cost of train travel in more than a decade just months after prices were already increased.
It has been predicted today that train prices across England and Wales could rise by nearly 5% before the New Year.
The 2021 rise in prices was delayed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic when train travel was at an all-time low, however, tickets still saw a price rise of 2.6% in March.
Abhijit Tembhekar / Flickr
And this morning, the Retail Prices Index for July 2021 was confirmed as 3.8% by the Office for National Statistics, meaning passengers could see fares rise by 4.8% in 2022, which would be the largest hike since 2012.
This means that the cost of rail travel could increase twice within ten months, and would see a Manchester-Glasgow off-peak return rise by £6.30 to £94.90, according to Metro.
Though all hope isn’t yet gone – changes to the fares in 2022 are still yet to be confirmed.
Jon David Houghton / Wikimedia Commons
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “No decision has been made on national rail fares.
“The government is considering a variety of options and we will announce our decision in due course.”
This news has come as train travel in Manchester and beyond is on the rise – earlier this month, we reported that zero cases of Covid were found in Manchester Piccadilly Train Station, despite thousands of commuters using the station’s services as offices reopen.
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