Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to implement covid-19 lateral flow testing for staff working in the maintained and private nursery sector.

Rapid, regular testing for people without symptoms of COVID-19 has been made available across the country from week commencing 11 Jan with the eligibility of the community testing programme expanded to cover all 317 local authorities.

The best way currently for those in private early years settings and childminders to access asymptomatic testing is via the community testing programme.  Local authorities have been encouraged to target testing at critical workers such as early years staff during the national lockdown.  We continue to look at more direct approaches.

We are rolling out our asymptomatic testing programme to primary schools, who will receive testing kits for staff this week. This includes schools-based nurseries and maintained nursery schools. The asymptomatic testing programme will offer all primary school, schools-based nursery and maintained nursery school staff home Lateral Flow Device (LFD) test kits for routine testing.