Blackburn with Darwen is not going into local lockdown - this is the message from the borough's council as it was announced on Thursday evening that further lockdown easing measures in the area were being postponed.

The council had already decided to delay the re-opening of leisure centres, pools and gyms until it was confident the number of cases had reduced further and stabilised.

To support the council’s actions, the government announced that further lockdown easing measures would be put on hold.

A spokesperson for the council said: "It is important to stress that Blackburn with Darwen is not going into local lockdown and this is different to the interventions in Leicester.

"In fact, these measures are intended to prevent this from happening."

A full list of the affected settings is available on the gov.uk website, but this includes indoor gyms and other indoor sporting centres that were due to reopen tomorrow, and casinos, bowling alleys, skating rinks and conference venues that were due to reopen from August 1.

The spokesperson added: "We appreciate this will be disappointing for businesses and residents and we are also working with government on making additional support available."

Cllr Mohammed Khan, Leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council: “We are very grateful to our communities for working with us.

"The increase in testing is helping to ensure that we are heading in the right direction with a reduction in positive cases and hospital admissions.

“We need to keep up the momentum with our strong prevention work so we agree its sensible not to relax the easing of restrictions at the moment to stop the spread.

“We have already decided to delay the opening of our council leisure facilities along with introducing other localised prevention measures.

"We feel that accelerating our control measures in this way will assist us to move out of having higher COVID rates even faster- we are grateful for the Government’s help in our local plans on this."