Five council leaders have called on the Government to ditch the private track and trace system.
The cross-party leaders have written to health secretary Matt Hancock calling for him to fund local public health teams to run the system themselves, rather than private companies Serco and Sitel.
Phelim Mac Cafferty, leader of Brighton & Hove Council, said: ‘The funding instead needs to be urgently handed over to local council public health teams like the one here in Brighton and Hove which is helping keep the transmission level low, despite a decade of savage government cuts.’
A recent poll for campaign group We Own It found three-quarters (74%) of people wanted the track and trace system run publicly.
We Own It campaigner Pascale Robinson said: ‘The government’s decision to outsource the system and side step the experience of local public health protection teams was a catastrophic mistake.
’But hope isn’t lost. Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson can turn this around. To do that they need to follow the calls from local council leaders across the country and give local government teams the resources and funding, instead of the failing, remote call centre system.’
