A South Lakes contact tracer has said that he has ‘only made two calls’ since being drafted in as part of the NHS’s Test and Trace programme rolled out across England in May.

The admission comes as fears rise over the enforcement of bars' and restaurants' new data collection approach, and as changes are made to ‘track and trace’ nationally.

The Endmoor contact tracer, who wished to remain anonymous, revealed that he had only had to make two phone calls as part of his contact tracer work in the area thus far.

This week, NHS Test and Trace announced it would be laying off 6,000 ‘idle’ contact tracers and allocating the rest to regional teams to work with councils, acknowledging that a centralised call handling system is not the most effective way to fight localised outbreaks or flare-ups of the virus.

The Government has also faced calls this week to cancel the contracts it awarded large outsourcing firms to lead the national contact tracing programme. For the contract it awarded outsourcing giant Serco, it has been reported that no clear bidding process took place.

Number 10 has also come under criticism for the numerous delays in the development of its 'world-beating' NHS contact-tracing app - which is now not expected to be rolled out in the UK before next year, having originally been promised to be up and running by mid-May.

However, Cumbria's Director of Public Health, Colin Cox, has assured that the local county-wide contact tracing programme - which works separately to the national scheme, although 'feeding back into it' regularly - has been working effectively.

Mr Cox could not confirm the number of new contact tracers Cumbria would be gaining as a result of the national Test and Trace programme's announcement.

But, earlier this week, he pointed to the reach of county's testing regime as an indicator of the local scheme's efficacy, saying: "We are pleased to see both Carlisle and Eden as two of the highest areas for the number of tests being carried out in England."