Apple and Google have blocked an update to the English and Welsh NHS Covid-19 contact tracing app over an alleged broken agreement.

The tracing app includes a function that allows users to scan QR codes when entering venues, such as pubs or restaurants. This allows local authorities to alert visitors if the venue saw an outbreak of Covid-19 cases.

The proposed update would have asked users if they were willing to upload a log of all the venues they had checked in to if they were diagnosed as Covid positive. This would have helped local authorities identify potential outbreaks.

However, an agreement between health authorities and the tech giants prevented them from gathering location data.

In order to work, the app utilises a contact tracing API developed by Apple and Google. Part of adopting their software required authorities to “not share location data from the user’s device with the public health authority, Apple, or Google,” according to the agreement.

While location data had previously been gathered, it was only used to inform visitors to certain venues if other people had reported infections. Depending on the number of cases, they were either told to monitor symptoms or get tested immediately.

The new update would have made that information accessible to others.

As such, both Apple and Google prevented the new update from becoming available, with the previous version of the NHS Covid trace app still available for download.

Since many of the venues that use the check-in function have been closed due to the most recent lockdown, it has been underused in recent months. With lockdown rules relaxing across England and Wales this week, the update was intended to help facilitate this.

In Scotland, the separate Test and Protect app was bound by a similar clause. However, to work around this, authorities created a separate app, Check in Scotland, for users to share venue history.

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The NHS Covid-19 contact tracing app has a long and controversial history. Previous attempts to release a contact tracing app failed, with one app, which was trialled on the Isle of White, cancelled in June due to restrictions imposed by Apple.

This meant that only 4% of iPhone users were detected by the software when the user’s handsets were not in use.

A legal challenge from privacy rights campaigners the Open Rights Group (ORG) forced the UK Government to admit that it had deployed the Test and Trace programme without a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).

Fully launched in September 2020, the contact tracing app received 10 million downloads in a week. However, a glitch meant that over 60,000 English users could not log positive results.