‘I was left stunned and worried for my health’

Allotment owner raises concerns after ‘people getting out of their cars, coughing and sneezing at test centre’

THE health and safety of a mobile Covid-19 testing centre in Leek has been raised at Government level with the Department for Health and Social Care.

The mobile centre facility is being set up on the car park at Newton House in Cheadle Road, Leek.

The boundary of the site joins the allotment area run by Leek Town Council.

However, one allotment owner has spoken of her major concern over the site last week.

The lady, who does not want to be named, was working in her allotment next to the boundary last Tuesday.

She told the Post & Times: “This site is close to the allotments. There were people getting out of their cars, coughing and sneezing on the boundary near to where I was working.

“People on the allotments could not believe it, I was left stunned and worried for my health.

“I shouted to them to get away from the boundary.

“I feel that a risk assessment had not been carried out and I felt in an unsafe situation.

“The test centre has been going on for some time, but people have never got so near the boundary before.

“We keep a social distance on the allotments, but people were coughing over the allotments. Local people do not seem to know about the centre.

“The main aim must be that the centre is run properly. I contacted our County Councillor for the area, Charlotte Atkins, to look into the issue. The site manager did come over to apology to us over the issue.”

County councillor for Leek South, Charlotte Atkins reported the incident to Dr Richard Harling, Staffordshire County Council’s Director of Health and Care.

She said: “Unfortunately Staffordshire’s Director of Public Health has little control over local test centres because the Government has outsourced the £45m contract to provide test centres to Serco despite their extraordinary failure to deliver an effective Covid–19 test and trace system, which the Prime Minister boasted would be ‘world beating’!

“Local authority public health directors have the

expertise and community knowledge to successfully trace the contacts of infected people and to organise properly run testing centres. But the Government has bypassed them and put their faith in giant outsourcing concerns, like Serco, which have a history of failure. This is a crucial public service that should be run by public health experts who have the

experience and track record to deliver a safe and effective testing and tracing regimes.

“Since I contacted him, Dr Harling said he would raise his concerns with the Department of Health and I will raise the issues on the Staffordshire Covid-19 Control Board on which I sit.”

A Staffordshire County Council spokeswoman confirmed to the Post & Times

this week that Dr Richard Harling has raised the matter with the Department for Health and Social Care.

A Co-operative Bank spokesperson said: “We are pleased to have been able to make our car parking facility at Newton House available for use by the Mobile Testing Unit. We are committed to supporting our local communities at this key time.”