Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support the Government is providing to local authorities to help them (a) pinpoint and (b) contain small-scale outbreaks of covid-19 shown on Pillar 2 testing results.

All local authorities have been provided access to a dashboard by NHS Digital, with Test and Trace data. This means they know the numbers of people saying they had symptoms, as well as positive cases.

The Government is clear that NHS Test and Trace must be locally-led and we are working with local leaders and communities to take swift action to prevent and manage outbreaks, ensuring that our response works for them, supported by a national service which they plug into.

All 152 upper tier local authorities have created and shared their Local Outbreak Control Plans. Decisions about where a lockdown will apply will be made at the local authority level, based on the Local Outbreak Control Plan, informed by local data and supported by the Joint Biosecurity Centre.

Further information is available at the following link:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/