In a press conference this afternoon health secretary Matt Hancock announced that millions more people will be facing tier four restrictions from Boxing Day, as the new, more transmissible, strain of coronavirus continues to spread, particularly in the East and Southeast of England.

Hancock said that, from midnight on Boxing Day, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire would all be entering tier four. 

Hampshire, with the exception of New Forest, and the parts of Essex and Surrey not already in the toughest restrictions will also enter tier four.