Rochdale council boss says 'big questions' remain over track and trace plans

Chief executive Steve Rumbelow has concerns over how local and national government systems will link up

A town hall boss says there are still ‘big questions’ over how track and trace - the next big step in preventing the spread of coronavirus - is going to work.

The government says it will have 25,000 contact tracers ready to track down people who have been near those with Covid-19 from June 1, as well as a call centre and smart phone app playing a part in the strategy.

And it has also announced a £3m package to help local authorities ‘work with the government’ and ‘develop and action their plans to reduce the spread of the virus in their area’.

Tameside is among the 11 councils that will initially share best practice with others on supporting the government and is the lead authority for Greater Manchester.

That has been welcomed as ‘a positive’ by Rochdale council chief executive Steve Rumbelow.

But he says how local and national government operations will link up is still not totally clear.

He said: “The concern was, and to some extent still remains, that what’s being done is being done fairly late in the day. We have not yet seen enough of the detail.”

Greater Manchester is launching its own track and trace system this week, making use of the data and expertise it has at regional level.

Mr Rumbelow says a lot of ‘really good work’ has been done to put in place arrangements that will focus on ‘more difficult and complex settings’ - such as homeless shelters, whereas the national programme will deal with ‘more straight-forward’ scenarios.

“It’s right it should be passed down more locally for more complex work, but we have not seen the detail. We have our framework in place but don’t know how the two schemes will bolt together,” he added.

While Mr Rumbelow says local leaders are feeling more encouraged than they were prior to last week’s announcement concerns remain about how councils will effectively support the national programme.

He added: “The problem is the national system uses data flows and we don’t get that data, so it’s really difficult to support contact tracing if that data is not flowing down to the local level

“The only decent data we have is if tests are done locally but not at the scale necessary for this next stage.”

Sign up to the free MEN email newsletter

Get the latest updates from across Greater Manchester direct to your inbox with the free MEN newsletter

You can sign up very simply by following the instructions here

Another concern is that council workforce could be stretched too thin as they are also committed to other aspects of the coronavirus response.

Mr Rumbelow said: “One of the problems is that skill-set in local authority settings does exist, we have had public health responsibility for enforcement control for the best part of 10 years now, so those duties are there anyway.

“But the capacity tends to be in our public health and tends to be relatively small - as are our environmental health and public protection teams since austerity. So that is using capacity that will be helping support businesses to restart work in an Covid-appropriate way.

“So there will be some tension and difficulty but things do seem to have moved in a more positive direction.”

And on the immediate future the council boss added: “I'm a bit more positive than I would have been previously, but there are still big questions and presumably that will emerge over the next week or so, leading up to June 1.

“We need some engagement prior to that so we are sighted on what we need to be doing and we have the mechanism to interface effectively with the national system.”

He continued: “We need to understand the eligibility criteria, what the definition of close contact is. They will presumably have modeled an estimate of the numbers we are talking about and what specific levels of complexity can be passed down and what can be handled at national level.

“We need dialogue next week to make sure we can join those parts of the system up.”