People have had problem making books for the above.

To be fair this in the National test and trace system and the way it is set up.

I have raised this with the Council (Director of Public Health) and below is the latest information.

Thank you for highlighting the problems that residents have been having with booking tests on the government portal and calling 119 today.

I followed this up with Department of Health and Social Care and have been told that demand for testing in both Oldham and Rochdale has been very high today, and therefore all available testing slots have been taken up.

One of the challenges with the national booking portal is that once all slots are booked at a site, it is no longer listed on the portal until more slots become available.

This means that anyone looking for a test, including those answering calls to 119 won’t be able to see that the site exists. We have raised this issue with the team previously and I will do so again to see if we can get some changes made to both the way information is presented on the site and the script used by call handlers.

I will also ask for some additional wording to be adding to our local communications to highlight that if the site isn’t listed this is because slots are fully booked.

Unfortunately the mobile testing unit, such as will be in Shaw, isn’t able to accept walk ups, so residents will need to book in order to access testing.

However, more slots should be available for booking tomorrow once the Wednesday and Thursday time slots are released.

I will be following this up with the national team tomorrow to try to get some changes made to the booking portal and 119 script for the future.