On behalf of its membership, the cross-party LGA regularly submits to Government
consultations, briefs parliamentarians and responds to a wide range of parliamentary inquiries. Our recent
responses to government consultations and parliamentary briefings can be found here.
As the UK leaves the European Union, it is important that any future relationship with the EU explicitly meets the needs of the UK health and care sector.
Despite councils’ good work, the current funding model is not sustainable. Local authorities’ public health grant funding has reduced by over £700 million in real terms between 2015/16 and 2019/20.
"If the Government’s air quality plans and any new local powers are to be successful, they need to be underpinned by local flexibility and sufficient funding which needs to be addressed in the Spending Review. "
Councils support active travel. Getting people to use more active travel will improve congestion, air quality and obesity rates, which in turn have substantial benefits such as for local economies, education and taxpayers.
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.
Sustainable, long-term investment in councils’ public health services is needed if we are to reverse reductions in life expectancy and tackle health inequalities across the country.
While these powers are a welcome addition to the tools that councils have to tackle local outbreaks, and some councils have issued directions, there are also some challenges in using the directions. The regulations include the threshold of a serious and imminent threat to public health before a direction can be issued, and there is a need to consult with both the local Director of Public Health and to inform the Secretary of State for Health. This threshold has had the effect of deterring councils in areas where there has not to date been a significant rise in infections from issuing directions, in the belief that they do not meet the test of a serious and imminent threat to public health.
This briefing summarises the key messages in the Adult Social Care Winter Plan (published by DHSC on 18 September 2020) and sets out the key actions for local authorities in a format that allows colleagues to clearly identify gaps.
The most recent test and trace figures prove again that councils’ public health teams, with their unique expertise and understanding of their communities, have more success in reaching complex close contacts of positive cases, where NHS Test and Trace has been unable to do so.