Health secretary Matt Hancock has confirmed that england would be entering a new tier system, tougher than the previous one, as of 2nd December.
Among those in Tier 3, which will allow non-essential retail, places of worship and gyms to reopen, but will ask that pubs and restaurants offer takeaway and delivery only, are councils in the Tees Valley, (including Middlesbrough and Darlington); in the North East (including Sunderland, Newcastle, and County Durham), in the North West (including Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Blackpool, Yorkshire, the West Midlands, the East Midlands) and a handful of councils in the South East (Slough, Kent and Medway) and the South West (Bristol, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset).
Meanwhile, Liverpool, which has effectively been in lockdown for several months, will be in Tier 2, as will London and Devon.
See the full list here, and search your postcode to find out which Tier you're in.
In a speech to the House of Commons - after the tier locations were published on the government website which crashed shortly before his announcement - health secretary Matt Hancock said that it was a relief to see that cases are down 19% and hospital admissions have dropped by 7%.
However, "we must protect our NHS this winter," he said.
"I am so grateful for the resolve that people have shown throughout this crisis," he added, and thus"we will not be renewing national restrictions."
"I know that this news provides hope for many, but we must remain vigilant," noting 696 deaths with Covid yesterday.
"We cannot simply flick a switch and try to get life back to normal," as, he explained, "we must keep surpressing the virus, whilst supporting education, the economy and the NHS."
Regretting the decision to make tiers "tougher than before," he explained the methods behind the calculations.
"We set out the criteria in the Covid-19 plan and published the data based on which the decisions are made," naming case rate, positivity rate and pressures on the local NHS.
"We've not looked just at geographic areas but human areas," such as travel patterns and infection rates in surrounding areas.
"More areas than before will be in the top tiers, this is necessary to protect the NHS."
"Frankly, the less any one person passes the disease, the faster we can get the disease under control together, and that is on all of us."
He continued to explain that the government will be rolling out mass testing programmes like trialled in Liverpool to all Tier 3 areas to bring the infection rate down and reduce the Tier level.
"Viruses can take a short time to spread but a long time to vanquish and sadly there is no quick fix. They call upon our determination to make sacrifices that will bring it to heel, and our ingenuity to make scientific advances to see us through."
"Hope is on the horizon but we still have further to go so we must all dig deep. The end is in sight. We must'n't give up now. We must follow these new rules and make sure that our actions today will save lives in future, and help get our country through this."
Despite the Health Secretary's claim that "most of the country will be in Tier 2," it would appear that many areas where the infection rate remains low have been placed in Tier 3, much to the discontentment of hospitality businesses there.
