The government seems to mean quite a lot of different things by "local lockdown" - it really feels if ministers have the vague sense that flare-ups are going to require targeted measures, but have no real strategy for how to do it.

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In the video, the PM repeats the claim that local lockdowns have already worked in places like Weston-super-Mare. This was news to people in Weston-super-Mare, who did not realise they'd had a local lockdown. In fact, a hospital just temporarily closed.
2/ https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/somerset-councillor-hits-back-claim-4199457

In the same breath, the PM suggested that local lockdown might be required in Leicester. But the briefing on this suggests that, by contrast to the Weston-super-Mare case, this means keeping in place the whole gamut of restrictions that are currently in force nationally.

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By contrast, again, the PM's spokesman today suggested that local authorities have "a range of powers themselves to allow them to contain local outbreaks - for example they can impose temporary closures of public spaces, businesses and venues." So is it, in fact, up to them?

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So here are four questions the government needs to answer. (And it then needs communicate the answers to councils clearly.)

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(1) Are decisions about local restrictions going to be made in central government, and enacted by ministers using powers under the Public Health Act 1984 like the national lockdown was, or are they going to be made by local authorities? Or both?

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(2) If local restrictions are going to be imposed by central government, then under what conditions - a certain R-rate, or a certain number of infections per population, or a certain proportion of ICU capacity used, or what? Will the Joint Biosecurity Centre have a role?

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(3) If restrictions are to be imposed by local gvt, will they get more powers? They presently have some powers to keep a child from school, isolate people who have been assessed or tested, enforce health and safety law on businesses and employers.

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But if they want to close premises or schools indiscriminately, or restrict movements of people who may be infected but haven't been tested, they must apply to magistrates to do so. (Ministers could empower councils to act on their own initiative, if they wanted to.)
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(4) If councils are to have a role, how will ministers make sure that there is a consistent approach across the country? It would be very odd, in rule of law and fairness terms, for me to kept at home while someone in the next borough is not, if the risk is the same.

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Ministers could actually dodge a lot of these questions re Leicester, by revoking the national lockdown regulations in part, and leaving them in force there.

But that's a very short-term fix. Government needs an actual strategy for how this will work.

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