The current approach to lockdown is, and frankly the government's approach during the lockdown as a whole has been, inconsistent from start to finish. If you switch strategies mid-pandemic you are going to get the worst of all worlds and we have seen this come home to roost.
Why did we have no quarantine for months, and then start a blanket quarantine, only to add the exemptions that should have been there in the first place, only to suddenly de-exempt several countries that were borderline for inclusion in the exemptions list in the first place?
If local lockdowns are the answer to balancing health and the economy, why is Appley Bridge being treated the same as Rochdale? Or Ilkley the same as Bradford city centre? Or Darwen the same as Blackburn? The virus doesn't respect political boundaries, it transmits via social contact. Social boundaries rarely reflect political ones.
It's by looking at where the government has gone wrong that you can start to formulate a sensible response to what should now be done. There's no point crying over spilt milk - the cockups of earlier this year can't now be undone. We can start making the right decisions going forward, though.
Now, let's assume that we are going to continue with the elimination approach (which has countless incumbent side-effects, but sadly looks to continue regardless). All wholesale "local" lockdowns, such as the one 'oop norf', should be scrapped and replaced with a ward-by-ward, true lockdown.
This lockdown shouldn't be what we think of as a "lockdown" in this country. It should literally mean house arrest, no ifs or buts. Roadblocks should be in place, and food delivered to people's front doors. Police patrolling the streets and ensuring that no-one leaves their house unless they're being taken away in an ambulance or police car!
Such a lockdown would be devastating to the people affected (which would sadly include many innocent "bystanders" without the disease). This would be a price worth paying for the freedom that could then be granted to everyone else, and it would be a sacrifice that would of course only have to last for 14 days.
Of course everyone in the ward would be tested, preferably multiple times during the lockdown, to get an idea of figures and spread. Such restrictions should be applied to any ward which had known cases in the previous 14 days.
All other restrictions on daily life could be eliminated. Everyone could be allowed to live their life as normal, without masks, social distancing, shielding or closures, and although the economy clearly wouldn't fully recover immediately, it would do so a darnsight quicker than it is going to, given what the government are actually doing.
Naturally, anyone arriving from outside the area applying such a policy (be that England, the whole of Britain, or NI too if the RoI agreed to implement the same measures) would have to go into a similarly strict 14 day quarantine. As in, don't even bother with passport control or anything like that, send people straight to a hotel at the airport, to be confined to their room for 14 days.
Now, would this ultimately be the right approach? I'm not sure. But it would be a hell of a lot more logical than the current approach, and ultimately virtually everyone in the country would be living a totally normal life, apart from the quarantine if holidaying. You would have issues with people not wanting to take tests in case it comes up positive and then their ward is locked down, but with sufficient testing capacity, it's easy enough to detect flare-ups using random (mandatory) sampling.