Briefings and responses

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan is an important opportunity to recognise local government’s leadership role in improving the mental health and wellbeing of our communities.

Everyone should have access to healthy and affordable food. The strategy response represents a missed opportunity to tackle the underlying causes of a variety of issues, many of which will continue to be exacerbated by the growing cost of living crisis. Unless the government takes urgent action, health inequalities will widen and its ambition to halve childhood obesity by 2030 will be missed.

Smoking prevalence analysis: methodology summary by the LGA Research and Information Team

Certainty over long-term funding is needed to meet the 2030 ambition. Local authorities’ public health grant has been cut by 24 per cent on a real-terms per capita basis since 2015/16 (equivalent to a reduction of £1 billion). This has had an adverse effect on councils’ ability to invest in services and functions that prevent ill health, reduce health inequalities and support a sustainable health and social care system. This includes smoking cessation and tobacco control.

Achieving the scale of ambition set out in the White Paper will require substantial and long-term commitment not only from Government but from local government and NHS leaders at every level – national, regional, system, place and neighbourhood. We look forward to seeing this reflected as the ICS and wider reforms are rolled out in practice.

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 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.

This briefing sets out the LGA's response to different parts of the Government's health and social care integration white paper. We welcome the recognition that achieving better health and wellbeing outcomes for individuals and communities is the primary purpose of integration, but achieving the scale of ambition set out will require long term commitment from Government, local government and NHS leaders at every level.

This briefing provides an update of the ADASS Advice note 'Carers and Safeguarding Adults' produced in 2011 for frontline workers and brings it in line with the Care Act 2014. It is intended to be used as a practical tool and does not seek to amend or replace existing statutory guidance that may be in place. The briefing will support the improvement in practice regarding safeguarding adults as well as safeguarding their carers.

The Government published the Reforming the Mental Health Act white paper in August 2021, which sets out proposed changes to the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) and wider reforms of policy and practice around it. This briefing summarises the key points of the white paper with regard to people with a learning disability and autistic people.