ALMOST 100 people from the West Mercia Police area - which covers Herefordshire and Shropshire - were fined for travelling to Wales during the coronavirus lockdown.

Less than half of the fines issued by Dyfed-Powys Police for breaking coronavirus lockdown were handed out to residents of the force area, new data has revealed.

The information from the National Police Chiefs Council shows that of 1,156 fixed penalty notices dished out in the Dyfed-Powys force area, just 493 were to people who lived across the force's patch.

Instead, 178 came from the South Wales Police area, while 92 were from West Mercia.

The data also revealed that 43 people from the Metropolitan Police's area were stopped and fined in Dyfed-Powys, showing that dozens of people had travelled from London to break the lockdown restrictions.

Another 42 were from Merseyside, and 72 were from Gwent Police's area in south east Wales.

National Police Chiefs’ Council chairman Martin Hewitt said: “This analysis enables individual chief constables to better interrogate and understand the data in their local context. It also enables communities to scrutinise the data and ask questions of their local police.

“The number of FPNs issued overall is low reflecting our approach of enforcing only as a last resort.

"It is also important to recognise that this data presents only a partial picture as it does not show the hundreds of thousands of interactions with the public where engagement, explanation and encouragement was effective and there was no need to issue a fine.

"Those who were given a fine did not follow the regulations that millions of others were abiding by, which were there to control the spread of a deadly virus, protect the NHS and save lives."

The figures do not cover the entire period of lockdown, however.

In total 1,710 fines were issued between the start of lockdown and July 6, of which 750 were dished out in Powys.