Decision details

Context and background
Initial plans for mass asymptomatic testing, targeted and at scale, were developed by Leeds City Council in December 2020 following announcement and communication by central government via the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). However, following the national lockdown imposed in January 2021, DHSC recommended that local asymptomatic testing should instead be targeted to critical key workers and cohorts of the workforce that are frontline and unable to work from home. Local councils were encouraged to develop plans and submit a proposal for key worker testing, setting out costs, arrangements, and key worker cohorts. DHSC stated that the testing programme could only run during a specific time frame until March 31st 2021; this meant that the development of local plans and discussions with partners had to occur at pace to ensure testing could be implemented for a 6-8 week period.

Leeds proposal
The proposal in Leeds is to test approximately 3,500 key workers twice a week, from the following cohorts:
• Fire service/ West Yorkshire Police/ Transport
• 3rd sector
• Hostel and temporary accommodation staff
• Funeral directors
• Hotel staff
• Early years staff
• Taxi drivers
• Passenger transport
• Cleaning staff
• Waste management
• Children’s homes
This amounts to 56,000 tests over the duration of an 8 week programme.
The three testing sites proposed across the city are:
1. Headingley Campus, Leeds Beckett University, LS6 3QS
2. City Campus, Leeds Beckett University, LS1 3HE
3. The Old Fire Station, Gipton, LS9 6NL
The two Leeds Beckett University sites are already established, with existing infrastructure and workforce arrangements in place to undertake student and staff lateral flow testing. Following discussion with university colleagues, utilising the space capacity at these sites (due to a decrease in student testing demand following the national lockdown) was agreed to be a prudent approach to developing the testing programme. The third site at Gipton was agreed to be ideally located to capture the key workers transiting in/out of Leeds, in particular third sector workers. Unlike the university sites, the Old Fire Station will require setting-up as a test centre in the first instance, which includes establishing the appropriate infrastructure. This site will be staffed by Leeds City Council workforce identified within the human resources staffing pool.