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In response to the Department for Health & Social Care’s consultation on making COVID-19 vaccination a condition of deployment in older adult care homes, Joanne Roney, President of Solace, said: “Social care and NHS services are increasingly integrated so instead of making vaccination compulsory for one part of the workforce and not the other we should be thinking about the system as a whole or there is a risk of creating unintended consequences.

“The reasons for lower vaccine take-up among certain parts of not just the health and care workforce, but society as a whole, are wide-ranging and complex. So before reaching for legislation we should seek to understand the barriers preventing people from getting vaccinated, and learn from other parts of the UK about what they are doing to achieve higher take-up rates.

“Local government working in close partnership with our health partners has been a cornerstone of the pandemic response, and it will be key to the recovery too. As such our respective workforces need to be treated with a similar level of respect.”