Agenda item

Health & Wellbeing Groups

Information on the Council’s proposal that each Area Board establishes a Health and Well Being Group.

Housing

An update on the delivery of new housing to meet local needs.

Officer: James Cawley, Associate Director for Adult Care Commissioning and Housing

James Cawley, Associate Director for Adult Care Commissioning and Housing presented two updates to the Board.

Health & Wellbeing Groups

The Council proposed that each Area Board would establish a Health and Wellbeing Group (HWBG) to provide a community led local forum to facilitate the coordination of joined up services for older people living within a community area; gathering the views of older people and ensuring that these views were represented at the local Area Board. The HWBG would focus on identifying the needs of a local population and supporting the development of services that would meet these needs.

The HWBG would:

•        Discuss and advise on support for older people in their area and make best use of the existing community capacity.

•        Reflect the needs of its local community and will ensure wellbeing and community resilience is a key priority for Area Boards.

•        Draw on local resources and assets in order to generate support for local initiatives.

Membership would be decided by each Area Board, some suggestions could include - the Community Engagement Manager, the Older Peoples’ Champion, Unitary and Parish Councillors, CCG Care Coordinators, Healthwatch and Representatives from the Voluntary Sector.

Comments and questions were then taken, these included:

·       The South West Wiltshire Area should receive a larger division of the money, as it has 3 community areas, covering a vast area, so having one equivalent of the former Good Neighbour post was not adequate when there were previously two. It was considered easier for people in Salisbury as most of the charities were located there; in the rural locations it was far more difficult to access services. Answer: However we divided the money we would have been asked for more. The decision by Cabinet was to divide the funding equally by 18 Area Boards.

·       Ever since the formation of the Area Boards in 2009, we have had to  fight to have more money, as we are the only Area Board to have 3 community areas, the others all have one. Please take the message back that the Board wants more funding.

Decision

The South West Wiltshire Area Board agreed that as the three community areas of Mere, Tisbury and Wilton spanned across a very large geographical area, of which the Good Neighbour scheme was originally set up to cover the rural areas where older people are isolated and not close to many services which tend to be based in the larger towns.

In order to continue to provide a good service to older, vulnerable people in the area, the SWWAB wish to see 3 paid Older People's Champions appointed in the area, one in each community area, to provide 10 hours paid employment per week, and that this service was properly funded by Adult Services/Health & Wellbeing.

Reason:

The current WC offer was unsatisfactory and would not provide sufficient man hours to cover the area.

Housing

The Board received an update on the delivery of new housing to meet local needs, including information on National policy context, Wiltshire priorities, Assessment of need, Local data to South West Wiltshire and the Next steps.

The Wiltshire Council Housing Strategy was due to go out for consultation shortly and would come the Area Board for comment.

Comments and questions included:

·       Mike Ash; Chair of the Wiltshire Rural Housing Group noted that housing prices in the area were quite high, even a 20% discount on buying a new home would be out of reach for most first time buyers.

With a lot of development taking place on rural exemption sites on perpetuity for community. Land owners will be tempted to put land forward. Answer: We had given though to it and had recognised all of those issues. There was a government description of a starter home; we are looking at whether there could be a different model to that. National policy says that you can have 20% discount off a new home, then after 5 years you can sell at market rate.

·       Was the housing programme stopping? Answer: There was a building programme to take us up to 2018.

·       What was the definition of affordable? Answer: Affordable was 60% of normal market rent, but now it was 80%, dependent on property size and location.

·       The current system was not working, as some villages can take 2 to 3 new houses, we need to try and get more.

·       A private landlord explained that he was forced to put rents up due to budget changes.

A copy of the slides from the presentations are attached to the minutes.