Agenda item

The Assistant City Mayor for Health and the Director of Public Health will deliver a presentation that provides an overview of Leicester City Council’s Public Health and its priorities for 2019/20. Members will be asked to consider and comment on the presentation as they see fit.

Councillor Dempster, Assistant City Mayor for Health, reminded Members that currently there was a move towards community-based provision of public health services.  As part of this, a holistic approach was being adopted, moving away from a narrow focus on health, which hopefully also would lead to greater parity between physical and mental health services.  The presentation circulated with the agenda papers explained how work on this was beginning and observations from this Commission on this work were invited.

The Director of Public Health introduced the presentation that had been circulated with the agenda for this meeting.  He noted that the ring fenced grant received from the NHS had been reducing and it was not know when these reductions would stop.  At present, 0.9% of this grant was allocated for Public Mental Health in 2019/20 and Councillor Dempster expressed concern at this low level of expenditure.  Members noted that 17.8% of this grant was allocated for “Other council services” in 2019/20.  These were services such as sports, walking and cycling which added public health value but mostly fell within the remit of other scrutiny commissions.

The Director drew Members’ attention to the work done by Mori, on the Council’s behalf, to identify how Leicester residents rated their health.  This had identified that 75% had rated their health as good in 2018.  This was an improvement, but some significant challenges remained to be addressed.  There were various determinants of health, some of which were lifestyle factors.  However, it needed to be recognised that these factors were not always choices, as people could be driven in to situations.  Consideration therefore needed to be given to how this could be addressed.

Members suggested that this provided an opportunity to work alongside primary care networks and asked how this could be achieved.  The Director explained that it was hoped that the driver for future strategy would be through the Joint Integrated Commissioning Board.  Although much still was unknown about the new structures proposed for primary health care delivery, the new joint health and wellbeing strategy provided an excellent opportunity to work with providers.

The Commission stressed the need for Public Health to work with services such as housing and social care services.  The Director explained that this already was underway.  For example, Public Health officers were in active conversation with Planning officers regarding standards for internal and external space in relation to housing.  This was an example of how the delivery of some public health initiatives would be through other services.

AGREED:

1)    That the Director of Public Health be asked to ensure that this Commission continues to monitor how the development of public health initiatives in relation to the development of primary care networks; and

2)    That this Commission asks the Assistant City Mayor for Health and the Director of Public Health to consider giving early attention to developing a strategy for how Public Health could impact on housing space standards through the developing Local Plan, it being recognised that this will require evidence to be compiled, including the impact of these standards on mental health.