Briefings and responses

Everyone should have access to healthy and affordable food. The LGA welcomes the work of the National Food Strategy and want to work with Government to take forward the recommendations as part of a whole-systems approach to improving communities’ health, wellbeing and resilience.

The LGA has offered to work with the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS and Health Education England to get the right number of training places commissioned and to deliver policies to ensure health visiting remains an attractive and valued career.

The LGA believes this is a progressive piece of legislation that would undoubtedly impact on smoking prevalence and ultimately reduce rates of smoking-related disease. We look forward to working with the Government and others to enforce this ban as well as ensure plans for a smokefree generation are a success.

The response to, and recovery from, an emergency is carried out first and foremost at the local level. Better coordination between the local, regional and national levels of response and greater support for organisations involved in response planning is needed to share and apply learning from exercises and real-life events.