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Councils across the country continue to lead the local fight against the pandemic. However, the Government’s Contain Outbreak Management Fund is set to end in March 2022, which poses a threat to councils' ability to ramp-up efforts in response to the Omicron variant.

Our response to the Government’s £22.5 million funding announcement to help areas with low vaccine uptake encourage hard to reach people to come forward.

“If we are to truly level up, we must focus on reducing poor health outcomes as well as economic imbalances between regions. It is encouraging that the levelling up white paper is expected to address narrowing the gap in healthy life expectancy and reducing obesity."

“The Government should ensure that local outbreak management plans can be stepped up if required if there is a re-emergence of the virus and that all partners are sufficiently resourced to make this happen."

“This funding is an important step forward in helping to support councils in addressing drug dependency in their local communities."

“The outbreak has highlighted the important health protection work of local authority commissioned sexual health services."

“The strategy response represents a missed opportunity to tackle the underlying causes of many of these issues, which will continue to be exacerbated by the growing cost of living crisis. Unless the government takes urgent action, its ambition to halve childhood obesity by 2030 will be missed."

"While it is good to see an increase in people taking their sexual health seriously, a rising demand is pushing some councils' sexual health services to peak capacity levels which are not sustainable in the long term."

"Many councils are using the NHS Health Check to target individuals or communities at increased risk by focusing efforts among socio-economically disadvantaged communities, and using proactive outreach programmes to get into those communities who are less likely to attend their general practice."

Cllr James Jamieson, Chairman of the Local Government Association responds to the announcement of the autumn COVID-19 and flu vaccination campaign.