Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason local authorities are not running covid-19 testing in local communities.

Local and mobile testing is locally coordinated by Local Resilience Forums and Recovery Coordinating Groups and decisions are centrally executed at their direction. Local testing sites are run under the control of Directors of Public Health who are best placed to direct testing capacity to local groups with the greatest needs. Regional test sites are centrally controlled and coordinated. We work with local authorities wherever possible on-site selection, particularly when a site needs to be relocated. However, we are actively exploring ways of enabling increased local control. The co-design approach between local and national teams has been key in achieving the pace at which these sites have been set up.