The Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has released a statement this morning regarding government discussions over potential Tier 3 reclassifications.
Mr Burnham, together with the leaders of all 10 councils in Greater Manchester and Deputy Mayor Baroness Bev Hughes have announced that they have a unified position on the government’s announcement introducing tiers of restrictions.
In the joint statement published on the GMCA website, Mr Burnham and the authorities said: “We are clear: the health of the people in the city-region is paramount and our primary focus continues to be on driving down the rates of COVID-19 infection.
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“Back in July, we took the difficult decision to agree with the government’s request for additional restrictions [and since then] our communities have been living with this patiently for months now, with no indoor mixing between households, and some of our businesses remaining shut for longer than in the rest of England.
“We are also clear that, alongside managing the virus, we need to protect people’s jobs and businesses [and] we will not let Greater Manchester be levelled down by this pandemic and the response to it.
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“We agree with the principle of having tiers of restrictions to provide simpler messages for our communities and for enforcement actions [as] this is better than a patchwork of restrictions that vary from council area to council area which are often in conflict with national messages.”
?️ "We will not let Greater Manchester be levelled down by this pandemic and the response to it."
The Leaders of all 10 councils, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, have a unified position on Government’s announcement introducing tiers of restrictions.
The statement continues: “We wrote to the government over the weekend putting forward a strong set of proposals for Greater Manchester building on Tier 2 with additional measures which will protect public health and maintain economic activity,”
“We have not yet had a substantive response to our letter [and] we do not believe we should be put into Tier 3 for two reasons.
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“First, the evidence does not currently support it.
“The rate of COVID-19 infection in Greater Manchester is much lower, at 357.6 cases per 100,000, compared to Liverpool City Region which is in Tier 3 at 488.0 cases per 100,000. Plus, our hospital admission rate is much lower than in LCR as Deputy CMO, Jonathan Van Tam, highlighted in his press conference this week. Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 7-day rolling average Covid patients in beds is at around the 225 mark and in Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust it’s at the 100 mark.
“Second, the financial package accompanying Tier 3 is nowhere near sufficient to prevent severe hardship, widespread job losses and business failure.
“At the Prime Minister’s press conference on Monday, the Chief Medical Officer said that Tier 3 measures would only limit the spread if they included much more widespread business closures than the baseline of pubs. However, the Government has not put in a place an economic package to support this level of business closure.
“For that reason, we believe the Tier 3 proposal is fundamentally flawed [and] the Government is placing councils in an invidious position,”
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“We therefore reject the Government’s current drive to pile pressure on places to enter Tier 3.”
Mark Waugh
It was also revealed that a number of leaders in Greater Manchester support for calls of a “national circuit break” lockdown.
The statement continued: “If the government pursues its current strategy, we believe it will leave large parts of the North of England trapped in Tier 3 for much of the winter with all the damage that will do.
“If cases continue to rise as predicted, and the government continues to refuse to provide the substantial economic support that Tier 3 areas will need, then a number of Leaders in Greater Manchester believe a national circuit break, with the required financial support would be a preferable option.”
The statement closes out with Mr Burnham and the authorities saying they “would welcome the opportunity to have a serious discussion with the government about these important issues.” and once again re-emphasising that: “All of this should be underpinned by a full financial package to support delivery [which] includes a furlough scheme of at least 80% of wages offered to all businesses forced to close or severely affected and suffering a serious loss of trade due to restrictions.”
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It continues: “We await keenly the promised engagement and dialogue with government and stand ready to work with government to ensure we have the right measures in place in Greater Manchester with the powers and funding we need to make the restrictions work.”
You can read the statement in full via the GMCA website here.
News
95% of Mancs apparently want the city to be ‘cashless’, new study reveals
Emily Sergeant
An eye-opening new study has found that only 5% of Mancs still use cash as their preferred method of payment nowadays.
It comes as no surprise that cash is less of a ‘king’ nowadays than it used to be, but now a new report by global financial technology company SumUp has suggests that only 5% of people in Manchester prefer to pay with cash, while 59% choose debit and credit cards, so that leaves one question… is Manchester on its way to becoming a cashless city?
To discover how payment preferences are evolving, SumUp conducted a nationwide survey to gather insights from UK consumers about their payment habits.
The company was particularly intrigued to not only discover payment methods people prefer, but what their concerns around certain payment methods, alongside how they feel about businesses that don’t accept digital payments.
95% of Mancs apparently want the city to be ‘cashless’ / Credit: Mylo Kaye (via Unsplash) | Pexels
Firstly, before we go any further, it’s important to note that almost two thirds (63%) of Manchester residents said they have changed the way they make payments over the past year.
Unsurprisingly, debit and credit cards remain the top choice for the majority of Mancs, with over half (59%) saying it was their preferred method of payment, followed by mobile payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay at 24% – which is likely thanks to their ease of use and the ability to have multiple cards on one device.
While a third (31%) of Mancs said that they ‘don’t mind’ cash and still opt to carry it for situations where digital payments aren’t an option, a growing number of people in the city are feel that digital payments are more favourable, with 25% thinking that businesses should adapt to modern payment methods and whilst 28% finding it ‘inconvenient’ when a business doesn’t accept digital payments.
A further 11% of people even say that cash-only businesses wouldn’t be an option they’d consider, and would actually avoid them wherever possible.
Only 5% use cash as their preferred method of payment / Credit: Rawpixel
When it comes to concerns around digital payment methods, where do Mancs stand then? Well, the survey found that a third (33%) of people are worried about their reliance on technology, especially being unable to pay if their phone dies, for example, while an additional 32% of people are concerned about security risks such as hacking, fraud, or stolen card details.
Among other things, 26% of survey respondents also said they worry about the privacy aspect of digital banking and the tracking your data.
“While debit and credit cards continue to dominate as the preferred payment method, it’s clear that cash is slowly declining in use, particularly among younger generations,” Corin Camenisch, who is the Marketing & Growth Lead at SumUp, commented on the report.
“Looking ahead, we can anticipate a rise in innovative payment methods like digital wallets, especially as younger consumers increasingly embrace the convenience and flexibility they offer.”
Featured Image – Pavel Danilyuk (via Pexels)
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Met Office predicts UK is set for ‘hotter than average’ summer
Emily Sergeant
The Met Office is predicting that the UK is set for a ‘hotter than average’ summer this year.
Fresh off-the-back of the news that 2025 is already the hottest spring on record, with a recorded 630 hours of sunshine from 1 March until 27 May, beating out the previous sunniest spring in 2020 by just four hours, the Met Office is now predicting that the UK is on the verge of a summer that’s ‘hotter than usual’.
According to its three-month outlook, the Met Office has predicted that it’s 2.3 times more-likely than ‘normal’ that it will be hot in the UK between 1 June and 31 August.
The average temperatures during those months are set to range from 10-17°C.
🌡️ ☀️ The UK has recorded its warmest and sunniest spring on record, according to provisional Met Office statistics.
Spring 2025 is now the 4th sunniest season overall for the UK, with only 3 summers sunnier since 1910.
Details in release below, or read this short thread 👇🧵
After it was revealed that this has also been the UK’s driest spring in more than a century, meteorologists are warning Brits that there could heatwave conditions could be reached at various times throughout the summer.
The release of the long-range forecast – which gives an indication of possible temperatures, rainfall, and wind speed over a period as a whole – comes after temperatures soared to 8°C (46F) above the average for this time of year this Saturday just gone (31 May).
It is important to note, however, that the Met Office thinks these predicted temperatures are similar to those in recent years, and it does not guarantee ‘prolonged’ hot weather.
The Met Office is predicting that the UK is set for ‘hotter than average’ summer this year / Credit: Mylo Kaye (via Unsplash)
The Met Office said in a statement: “While the current three-month outlook shows an increased chance of a hot summer, the temperature signals for this summer are similar to those for recent years and consistent with our warming climate.
“The increased chance of hotter than average temperatures is not a guarantee of prolonged hot weather or heatwaves, but it does mean that heatwave conditions could be reached at times.
“However, it’s important to bear in mind that an increased chance of hot conditions could also reflect a mix of hot and cool days, warm nights, or less extreme levels of warmth rather than continual heatwave conditions specifically.”
The Manc -
14th October 2020 
