Recommendation 15

In 2020–21, NHST&T paid £3.1 billion to secure the laboratory capacity to process PCR tests and £911 million for contact tracing, primarily for contact centres.30 In our March 2021 report, we found that NHST&T struggled to consistently match supply and demand for its test and trace services, resulting in either sub-standard performance or surplus capacity. We recommended that NHST&T needed to make better use of the capacity it had paid to create and strike a better balance between meeting surges in demand and maintaining timely services.31 However, NHST&T only used a minority of the laboratory and contact centre capacity that it paid for in 2020–21. In December 2020, the NAO found that, for its laboratories, NHST&T set a threshold utilisation rate of 85%, beyond which it felt they could not operate safely or reliably. By June 2021, this figure had been revised to 80%. However, the Chief Executive of the UKHSA told us that the figure was actually closer to 70%. The percentage of laboratory capacity that has been used is well below this. Between November 2020 and April 2021, the average utilisation of NHST&T’s laboratories was 45% and it does not have a target for their utilisation. Over Christmas 2020, when there appeared to be spare laboratory capacity as highlighted in the NAO report, some aspects of NHST&T’s performance nevertheless dipped as cases rose. For example, it provided only 17% of in-person PCR test results within 24 hours in December compared to 38% at the end of October. While NHST&T does have a 50% average utilisation target for its contact centre staff, the highest achieved was 49% at the beginning of January 2021 and this had declined to 11% by the end of February.32