Briefings and responses

The LGA broadly supports the Bill’s focus on improving the health and wellbeing of the population and the duty of bodies to have regard to this in making decisions.

The LGA broadly supports the Bill’s focus on improving the health and wellbeing of the population through greater integration between NHS organisations and between the NHS and local government.

The LGA broadly supports the Bill’s focus on improving the health and wellbeing of the population through greater integration between NHS organisations and between the NHS and local government.

We are strongly in favour of the duty to engage with patients, carers and representatives. We have committed to work with the Government, NHS, local government and patient and public voice organisations, to produce clear guidance to support local health and care systems to work in partnership with their communities.

We support the intention of the legislation to give local systems the flexibility to make their own arrangements for joining up services, and setting their own strategies for improving population health, but this means that there is relatively little on the face of the Bill and more emphasis will be on statutory guidance to accompany the legislation.

The LGA broadly supports the Bill’s focus on improving the health and wellbeing of the population through greater integration between NHS organisations and between the NHS and local government. We also support the duty on the integrated care board (ICB) and all local authorities within the integrated care system (ICS) to have regard to the integrated care strategy in making decisions. 

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.

The Health and Social Care Committee’s report correctly recognises the crucial role that local government has to play in ensuring children receive the support they need during the initial formative stage of life.

The Bill requires councils to produce improvement plans for some of their high streets at the same time as the tools available to them to make improvements continue to be blunted because of the continued erosion of planning controls.

The consultation paper was issued before strict measures were implemented to address the COVID-19 pandemic.  However, the financial environment for local government has changed so profoundly that we cannot overlook the issue.