COUNCIL chiefs are using location data to find out how many people travelled to York from areas in higher coronavirus tiers - and if visitors could be linked to the huge rise in cases in the city.

Police have also revealed they faced criticism for urging people not to travel into York and North Yorkshire from Tier 3 areas in the weeks leading up to Christmas, because the instruction to remain in areas with strict restrictions was guidance rather than law.

York’s Covid rate more than quadrupled in the fortnight between December 15 and 29.

Anonymised phone and credit card data will now be used to find out where people visiting the city came from.

Residents raised concerns with the council about people visiting York from areas with stricter restrictions and higher infection rates.

Public health director Sharon Stoltz told a York outbreak board meeting: “We are pulling together the mobility data of how people have travelled across York compared to the first and second lockdowns and we’re also working with partners to gather intelligence around where people visiting York were from.

“We will then be sharing that information with the Local Government Association and we’ll also be sharing it with the Local Resilience Forum, which we hope will help inform discussions in government about any future tier system and some of the challenges when you have neighbouring areas in different tiers, allowing movement of people, and the impact that has on the spread of the virus.”

Police issued 154 coronavirus fines between December 2 and January 5 - 115 to visitors who came to York to visit pubs, bars and restaurants in groups.

Lisa Winward, chief constable of North Yorkshire Police, said: “We were surrounded by predominantly Tier 3 areas.

“It is not, or was not and still isn’t, against the law to travel.

“The actual act of travelling is not against the law, it’s not an offence.

“What becomes an offence is what you then do when you arrive at the place that is either higher or lower than the tier where you live.

“There’s some really quite complicated nuances here that we understandably found the public struggling to understand.”

Police said they have had letters from MPs and a member of the House of Lords questioning their approach to deter people from visiting North Yorkshire from areas in higher tiers.

Julia Mulligan, North Yorkshire police, fire and crime commissioner, told the police, fire and crime panel: “People in Tier 3 didn’t really appreciate North Yorkshire’s policing response and indeed we’ve had quite a lot of correspondence from members of Parliament from outside of North Yorkshire, representing their constituents and some of the concerns they have had about the robust approach North Yorkshire Police has taken.

“At the end of the day - we are here to protect our communities and to stop the spread of the virus and I’m very content with the response that North Yorkshire has provided in this pandemic.”

Superintendent Mike Walker said there had been criticism of North Yorkshire Police for their messaging around people visiting from Tier 3 areas in December. He said Lord Scriven wrote to him asking why the police were trying to enforce guidance - as it was not against the law to travel between tiers.

He said: “North Yorkshire Police were trying to tell people that guidance was intrinsically linked to the regulations that we can police against.

“Particularly in York we issued lots of penalty notices to people from Tier 3 areas, who were coming in from those Tier 3 areas and then meeting up socially, so they were breaching their own restrictions from their area.

“The reason we were focusing on those individuals is because of the risk of them bringing the virus.”

He added: “When we come out of national lockdown and we go back into a tier system, we will continue with the messaging of stay in your own tier if the guidance is that you shouldn’t come out of it. But it is not helpful for the police that it was only guidance. We want to try to persuade whoever is making the decision on the tier system that it must be stronger, to not allow people to travel from high infection rate areas into North Yorkshire or York.

“We look at York now and it’s the highest rate in the region. We have evidence to suggest that people have travelled into York in that period.

“Have people brought the virus with them and is that why York is at the top of the list now?”

The public health team has also suggested the increase in cases could also be down to York residents mixing, York being under less restrictive Tier 2 rather than Tier 3 restrictions in December, and the more transmissible new strain of the virus.