Police hand out 'approximately 100' fines for breaking restrictions in Northamptonshire over past week

Northamptonshire Police handed out around 100 fines to residents this past week for breaking lockdown rules.

The force has stepped up its enforcement of people breaking the "rule of six" or failing to wear a mask during the second coronavirus lockdown.

It comes after Northamptonshire Police handed out more Covid-19 fixed penalty notices in three days at the end of October - 16 - than in the previous three-and-a-half months, according to official figures.

Assistant chief constable of Northamptonshire Police Simon Blatchly told a Covid-19 press conference today (November 27): "We continue to enforce over the past week with approximately 100 fixed penalty notices tickets issued for a range of issues such as people gathering indoors in greater numbers, failing to wear face coverings on public transport, outdoors, and unnecessary travel as well.

"There has been no particular incident or grouping, this has been county wide.

"Our hope is of course for the messaging we have been putting out as a partnership is that people do follow the rules.

"We have been put into Tier Two, which is positive, and we don't wish to go up a tier.

"From a policing point of view we're obviously putting plans in place for when we do come out into Tier Two and we're also looking ahead to Christmas and New Year possibly."

When asked if how he felt that officers had come across that many violations, the police chief said: "Yes, it's a little frustrating in that the lockdown rules are fairly clear. I think there's been some excellent messaging coming from us and shared in the media.

"You would hope the messaging would be landing by now."