Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to give permission for local directors of public health to run a localised tracing system.

We are working with local authorities to support NHS Test and Trace Services in their local communities.? Local contact tracing aims to use local knowledge about communities and individuals to increase the percentage of successful contacts made by contact tracers. Local contact tracing is currently only contacting those people who have tested positive and NHS Test and Trace have been unable to reach within 24 hours.

Local authority contact tracers are council employees and in some cases volunteers who are working under the supervision of Local Health Protection teams.

Each individual local authority will agree the terms of the service they will provide, so processes will vary regionally.