I'm the other way round to you, Matt - I live in Tier 2 but work in Tier 3. The difference is striking. People in the Tier 2 area where I live are better at following the rules than the Tier 3 area where I work.
My gym's in a Tier 3 area, and they've done a lot to try & ensure people remain safe, with a lot of extra cleaning stations put in. The one rule they have is you must wear a face covering unless you're exercising, and I can probably count on one hand the number of people who've obeyed this, excluding myself. Along with people gathering in the car park at work in the evenings (your typical car lovers who use the undercover bit of the car park to show off their engines) in gatherings of way more than six & not respecting social distancing, it's no wonder Staffordshire's in Tier 3 if this is replicated across the county, though I do accept this is more than likely just a microcosm.
Case in point regarding Staffs being in Tier 3: last Thursday, myself and my colleague had closed the petrol station down and were heading over the road to the main store before going home (there's usually a bit of cardboard & plastic to be put into the baler, plus waste milk from the coffee machine into the chiller to be removed & dealt with, and the keys are handed over). As is common, there were a number of cars in the undercover bit of the car park that I know didn't belong to colleagues - I'm unsure of the exact number, but it was almost certainly more than six. There were a lot of people, with no masks or social distancing. One of them, I later found out, has leukaemia, and I just had to facepalm at that. Why put yourself at even further risk? When we'd sorted out everything in store and had clocked out, we left the building, and the cars had left the undercover bit, but there were some blue flashing lights in the car park. We then realised it was a police car that had stopped a few vehicles which had been in the car park a few minutes previously. I'd hope some fines were doled out to people who were there.
As soon as you mentioned the baler, I deduced that we work for the same employer and my job has always given me a great insight into the behaviours of the general public as they live out their day to day lives. The behaviours from the GP I've seen from working throughout has changed significantly during the course of the year.
There was a massive difference between the full lockdown earlier in the year, the last Mickey Mouse one and the change of tiers. We entered into the so called "lockdown" in tier 2 and came out on tier 3 simply because of the greater Bristol area, even though we're outside of the county itself and outside of the city limits because of the amount of people in North Somerset and South Gloucestershire who work in the city.
After the appalling, frantic, "me me me" behaviour we saw during the frenzied panic buying before the first lock down, everything changed when we went in to lock down. Most people were perfectly reasonable, responsible and there was a genuine community spirit. The police were very good with PCSOs on patrol and helping out for the odd idiot. A number of colleagues were stopped and asked what they were doing out and had to show name badges. As there were very little reasons to be out, shopping became a bit of a social event, an excuse to be out and meet in the car parks but most people were reasonable. The rules were incredibly simple and easy to understand, don't go out unless you have to. Infection rates and death plummeted and businesses were allowed to reopen, most of them in full as a result.
Fast forward to now and our half assed attempt at this tier system and the lockdown that only seems to have succeeded in causing economic damage and everything seems to be back to normal apart from the devastating economic impact, which itself will cost lives. People are rocking on back out, huddling together, taking the whole extended family out shopping with them and generally doing whatever the hell they like.
I had to look up the rules in my area (didn't even know we were in that tier until I actually went looking for it). So I've basically adopted a common sense approach of staying away from as many people as possible and staying at home as much as possible. Imagine if I didn't bother looking into it, didn't care, lost my livelihood because of it or subscribed to one of these "it's not real" conspiracy theories.
The rules are so inconsistent. Can't sit in a beer garden staying away from people, but can send my kids to school with hundreds of other kids only for them all to get sent home again TWICE within days of going back. I get that people should be more individually responsible, but the fact of the matter is, they just aren't and the government has lost so much credibility with people like myself that even people who do treat it seriously don't have any respect for them.
Selfish people are ultimately to blame if we want to retain our civil liberties like in other countries but now economic desperation is causing non compliance. London, Bristol, Birmingham, Stoke, Manchester, Liverpool and many other places in tier 3 have awfully terrible levels of poverty (with the London, Bristol and Birmingham in particular having disgraceful wealth gaps where the super rich live next door to some of the worst deprivation in the country). The early lock down was simple, effective and easier to enforce than the nonsense we have now.
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It's so frustrating that the guidance has become more muddled & confusing as time's gone on, and I feel as though some of what's been done is to distract from the absolute excrement-storm he's responsible for. When we're still in a pandemic (and Tier 3), it's frustrating just how many people are using cash, despite being asked to pay by card as much as possible. I'm using so much sanitiser that I swear I could get drunk just by licking my hands. 
