Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason postcode level Pillar 2 data from the National Testing Programme dashboard was not provided to local authority Directors of Public Health for their local authority area on a daily basis.

NHS Test and Trace have compiled a detailed local authority dashboard which has been available since 11 June. This includes a total-local authority specific view of the number of tests conducted, the total number of positive cases and a rolling average for Pillar 1 and Pillar 2, as well as information on 111, 999 and online triage cases related to COVID-19. The dashboard is updated by Public Health England daily.

On 24 June we made available secure postcode-level and individual case testing data with all Directors of Public Health with upper tier local authorities – this is available to them at any time to access using their own unique authentication details. As the information contained is personally identifiable, we do need a specific data sharing agreement in place with a specific named individual. Due to data protection laws, the users are typically the Director of Public Health, who are granted access once they have returned the data sharing agreement.