Camden Council will lead on designing the local response to controlling fresh outbreaks of Covid-19 in collaboration with Hackney, Barnet and Newham, with a view to sharing best practice with other councils in London.

The four boroughs will be given a share of £300 million allocated for parallel programmes to be developed by 10 other English local authority groupings.

The government has defined the local authorities’ task as developing “tailored outbreak control control plans, working with local NHS and other stakeholders”, including by “identifying and containing potential outbreaks in places such as workplaces, housing complexes, care homes and schools” and ensuring that “testing capacity is deployed effectively to high-risk locations”.