Beauty salons in Nottinghamshire will have to close when the region is placed under England’s strictest lockdown restrictions from tomorrow.
Jason Zadrozny, the leader of Ashfield district council, said the county had been placed in “tier 3 plus” and nail parlours, tanning salons and tattoo parlours would have to close as well as many restaurants.
He told the Guardian: “We’re effectively in tier 3 plus. The additions for us in Nottinghamshire on top of tier 3 are personal care things – sunbeds, nail parlours, beauty salons, tattoo parlours – on the recommendation of Public Health England because they think tier 3 wasn’t enough to dampen the curve across Nottinghamshire.”
Hairdressers and barber shops will be allowed to remain open.
It had been thought that only the city of Nottingham and three other council areas would enter tier 3 this week, but rising infection rates mean this has been expanded to the whole of Nottinghamshire, a region of nearly 1.2mn people.
It means that a total of more than 8.7mn people in England – or one in seven of the national population – will probably be living under the country’s tightest restrictions by the end of the week.
Zadrozny said Nottinghamshire would receive £8 a head for test and trace and a further £20 a head for business support, the same as in other tier 3 areas, which equates to about £32mn in total for the region.
Nottingham, Rushcliffe, Gedling and Broxtowe were due to move into tier 3 at midnight yesterday but this has now been delayed pending the decision on placing the whole county in the highest category of restrictions.
Conservative MPs including Ben Bradley and Brendan Clarke-Smith, who represent seats in north Nottinghamshire, had been calling for their areas to be kept out of any tier 3 restrictions, but on Tuesday they conceded it was inevitable.
In a Facebook video, Bradley said the rising infection rate in the north of the country “makes it increasingly difficult for us as MPs to argue that it’s different, that we’re not in the same boat” as Nottingham, where university students accounted for a high proportion of cases in the past month.
He added: “It’s just frustrating. Naturally I don’t want people to have restrictions on their freedoms – that’s not what I’m about. I don’t think that’s what government is about. But we are in a situation where it’s really difficult now with these figures to be treated differently.
People protest against the coronavirus disease restrictions, in Nottingham, Britain, yesterday.
