Issue - meetings

Report by Maggie Rae, Corporate Director

In accordance with the Health and Social Care Act 2012, Cabinet member, Keith Humphries invited Maggie Rae, Corporate Director, in her capacity as Director of Public Health to present the Annual Report for Public Health for 2013/14.

Public health, transferred from the National Health Service and was now embedded within local government and completely based on the needs of the local population. Whilst acknowledging that there was always room for improvement, Maggie Rae commented that generally speaking the report was very positive and documented the various initiatives in place to improve the health of the local population. It was noted that during the period of the Annual Report, a number of challenges had had to be overcome, most notably twelve weeks of flooding when public health had been at the heart of the response as well as a measles outbreak. There continued to be very constructive partnership working with the NHS, Clinical Commissioning Group and hospitals.

The meeting noted how well and how quickly the public health team had integrated within the Council and Maggie Rae thanked the Council for the very warm welcome received by the public health staff.

Cllr Jon Hubbard welcomed the document and congratulated the public health team on all it had achieved. He did however comment that the document would benefit from including comparative figures and information in order to assess and measure progress and performance to put the success stories in context.

Maggie Rae explained that a technical document which documented this information was available and undertook to link this to the Annual Report on the Council’s website and circulate it to Cabinet members. Cllr Tonge noted that this had also been raised at Scrutiny where a similar undertaking had been given.

Resolved:

That Cabinet notes the Public Health Annual Report 2013/14.

Reason for decision

To formally present the Annual Report to Cabinet and provide an opportunity to express any views.