Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to taking to ensure local authorities are adequately resourced to encourage strong vaccine uptake locally.

To ensure local authorities are adequately resourced to encourage strong vaccine uptake locally, on 25 January we released £23.75 million funding to support our Community Champions Scheme. This supports councils and voluntary groups to expand COVID-19 communications with at risk groups. Community Champions will share COVID-19 vaccine advice and information to boost local vaccination take-up and will fund support for extra school programmes, helplines and phone calls to those in at risk groups.

The funding is to boost national organisations and voluntary and community groups who specialise in working with communities most at risk from COVID-19 so they can expand their work locally. This is part of over £7.9 billion government funding provided to councils to help them support their communities during the pandemic.

For More information on how we are supporting local authorities in encouraging uptake locally through the Community Champions Scheme can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/community-champions-to-give-covid-19-vaccine-advice-and-boost-take-up