While carefully scrolling through the list of nearby private providers of PCR tests on the Government website, I kept noticing the same thing: For every one to be found in the North West of the country, there were at least two more to choose from, just in Greater London.

Then, I spotted something even more frustrating. While some places in Greater London offered supervised tests at provider sites from £20, the best bargain I could find closest to my home in the Peak District for the same service would set me back £70. 

I had always known there was a North/South issue when it came to financial disparity – but since when were things more expensive up here than they were down there?

It was when Ryanair were offering £13 flights from Manchester to Malaga late last year that I chanced across this specific pay gap. Seeing the bargain ticket prices, I jumped on the opportunity for a low-cost trip to southern Spain to meet my husband – who had been renovating an old farmhouse for the last few weeks – and thought this would be the perfect opportunity for a short but sweet reunion.

However, just before I booked the flight, the Government reintroduced compulsory Covid-19 PCR tests for arrivals to the UK at that time, in a move to tackle the Omicron variant – and that’s when I uncovered the great PCR price divide.

After going through my options and being reluctant to pay more for what is essentially the same service just because of my postcode, I opted for the seemingly more standardised postal service and home-testing kits.  

At the time, the price of a PCR Day-2 home sample collection kit was £48. I bought the kit from Randox Health – one of the UK’s biggest Covid testing providers. The expected delivery for these kits is within four to six working days. Once tested, the sample test kit needs to be posted using a Randox dropbox, after which the company aims to provide results within 12-24 hours of receipt.  

From arriving back in the UK to receiving confirmation of the result, it took a total of five days, during which I had to self-isolate. If I’d used the costlier – and what I deem as the more ‘regionally-disparate’ – option of visiting a testing site, it would have meant the process could have been concluded more quickly, thereby fuelling my frustration towards the system even more. 

However, this isn’t just a one-off – there are other issues at stake here too. From earnings being higher in the south, to depression being more prevalent in the north – where psychiatrists are scarcer, it felt like this was just yet another way the Government was failing to tackle England’s inequality between the affluent south and the comparatively impoverished north.

Of course, you might not think it such a big deal, as the Government has since changed its rules last week to lateral flow tests instead of PCRs – however, people still need to use private providers for LFTs, which can still have price differences between the north and south of England.

While I fully support ramped-up measures designed to curb the spread of the virus and appreciate that travel during these precarious times comes at a price, it’s hard not to feel frustrated and let down that, once again, northerners are still managing to get a bad deal.

In fact, this unfair disparity of PCR testing access and costs is just one more example of how Britain is a long way off the Government’s aims to reduce economic and social imbalances between geographical areas in Britain – a policy known as ‘levelling up’.

A high-profile example of the failed ‘levelling up’ agenda was the axing of the Northern Powerhouse Rail in November last year. 

Systems like travel restrictions should be standardised

And I am not alone in my experience of inequalities in north and south testing.  

Fellow international traveller Lee Hogan from South Shields near Newcastle told me of his frustration over uneven access and pricing across the country.

A trip to Paris in early December was made considerably more burdensome for the family – who found same-day testing at Newcastle Airport cost £99 – whereas the same service at Heathrow cost £59. He also discovered there were hundreds of click and collection stations in the south but none within a 100-mile radius of his home. 

Meanwhile, Hussain Abdeh, superintendent pharmacist for Medicine Direct online pharmacy, told me that testing facilities were opened and scaled up in southern England before anywhere else in the country, meaning that the capacity of testing within the south is much higher than the north.

In turn, this led to ‘more drive-through testing facilities in the south, as they have the Lighthouse labs that can handle the daily volume of tests,’ he said, adding that the price seems to be higher due to the lower volume getting processed daily in the north. 

While this offers some sort of explanation for regional differences in testing accessibility, it offers little comfort for me personally – and all the other northerners in need of tests – and is verification of the power the south holds over the north and London-centric control of the country.

Last week, the Government announced the relaxing of travel rules. When travelling to England, pre-departure travel tests are no longer necessary and fully vaccinated passengers and under-18s no longer need a PCR test, but can take a lateral flow test upon arrival, which is cheaper.

However, free NHS lateral flow tests cannot be used for international travel to protect NHS capacity. Like with PCRs, travellers must book the test via a private company before travelling to England. 

These can be found on the Government website, with searches filtered by geographical location. But again, like the PCRs, the cost of the tests differ depending on the provider and testing method.

There’s more discrepancy between tests other than the ones at home, though. If you were to opt for self-testing at a test location, or supervised testing, the price gaps between north and south reveal themselves again. For a self-test at an approved provider site in North East England, prices start at £39 compared to £14 in Greater London. 

Still void of standard pricing and with testing facilities being more widely available in certain parts of the country, the UK’s disjointed testing travel system persists, despite restrictions being relaxed.  

In light of my recent experience, I believe that if Britain is ever going to close the north-south divide and ‘level up’ like the Government promises, rather than maintaining privatised models where companies can charge what they want, systems like travel restrictions should be standardised.

By supporting a single national standard for such services, we would have a framework in place for achieving economic balance and fairness across the county.

The unfair travel testing system I experienced just because of where I lived definitely put a damper on my few days in the Spanish sunshine. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]. 

Share your views in the comments below.

Source: Read Full Article