You asked

​Under freedom of information can you tell me if any other vouchers which have expired have been reissued please.

We said

Thank you for your request.

  • The ONS Covid Infection Survey (CIS) was set up to measure the prevalence and incidence of Covid-19 in the population, including among those who didn't realise that they had it at the time. It is of critical importance, directly feeding into Government policy.  The Programme is an exciting collaboration between the ONS, Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) plus academics from Oxford and Manchester Universities, Public Health England and a broad range of other external stakeholders. Our funding for this survey including the incentives is received from DHSC who commissioned the ONS to carry out the survey on their behalf. Incentives are offered as a Thank You for participant's time.

  • Since the start of the survey 3,758,751 incentive vouchers have been issued with 13,971 having to be reissued (0.37%). The majority of these re-issues are because email addresses where not taken or given correctly at the doorstep and the vouchers had subsequently not been received by the participant.

  • Out of the 13,971 reissued only a small amount (less than 10 cases) have been reissued due to expiration as a fault of the participant. These have been re-issued due to extenuating circumstances only, for example, the participant being hospitalised and therefore unable to redeem the voucher within the timeframe of 3 months.

  • Please note that the expiration date of the vouchers applies to e-vouchers only and not physical vouchers which we offer as an alternative to electronic vouchers. The expiration date is the time that the participant has in which to redeem the voucher on the Sodexo platform and select a retailer of their choice to spend their voucher. Each retailer offers their own terms and conditions on expiration dates of the vouchers, but the majority offer a period of up to 1 year with some offering periods of 2 years.