Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to share real-time postcode level (a) pillar 1 hospital test and (b) pillar 2 community test data on local covid-19 outbreaks with relevant local public health officials and local authority leaders; if he will ensure the publication of that data in a form to enable anonymised comparative analysis with other regions; what steps he is taking to improve the (i) granularity and (ii) timeliness of the data provided to local public health officials for the purpose of preventing local outbreaks of covid-19; and if he will make a statement.

All upper tier local authorities have access to record level (including sex, age, occupation and postcode) test and case data. Directors of Public Health are also receiving fully identifiable test, case and contact tracing data where the case data includes, address, postcode, sex, age, NHS Number, occupation, test date, and additional data describing progress through the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing process. Public Health England (PHE) provides access to this data via a secure platform to Directors of Public Health to support them to carry out their outbreak management responsibilities. This data is currently updated on a daily basis.

PHE began providing record level positive test data, including postcodes, to local authorities (including Directors of Public Health) on 24 June.