Agenda item

To receive a presentation from Tim Pashen, Executive Head: Community, Surrey Heath Borough Council, on the work of the Surrey Heath Health and Wellbeing Board,

Tim Pashen, Executive Head: Community, gave a presentation on behalf of the Surrey Heath Health and Wellbeing Board.  The presentation included an overview of the Health and Wellbeing Board’s structure, function and priorities together with an introduction to the Surrey Heath Prevention Plan.

The Committee was informed that the introduction of the Social Care Act 2012 brought about the biggest changes in health and social care provision since 1948 with the creation of Clinical Commissioning Groups, responsibility for public health passing from the NHS to local authorities and the setting up of Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBB) in order to bring together key stakeholders to work collaboratively to improve the health and wellbeing of residents.

The Surrey Heath HWBB was made up of partners from the Borough Council, Public Health and the Surrey Heath Clinical Commissioning Group and had the following key priorities:

·         To reduce the prevalence of long term conditions through action on their leading causes

·         To improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people in Surrey Heath

·         To improve the health of the Borough’s workforce

·         To help people live independently in their own homes.

The priorities had been selected according to an assessment of the health and wellbeing needs of the Borough’s population and to help the Board achieve their goals a multi-agency Health and Wellbeing Prevention Plan which described the services, programmes and activities that were either planned or already taking place in Surrey Heath that contributed towards the prevention of avoidable illness and death. 

The HWBB was working to ensure that the programmes and initiatives in its Prevention Plan aligned with those of the Frimley Sustainability and Transformation Partnership’s prevention and self-care work stream.  In doing this not only would the HWBB be able to reduce duplication and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its work but the Board would also be able to implement its programmes on a larger scale.

Arising from Members’ comments and questions the following points were noted:

·         The Borough Council had air quality monitoring stations in place at key points across the Borough and live updates on the air quality were available through the Council’s website. Consideration was being given to the possibility of making a service available where text messages could be sent to residents when pollution levels rose above a certain level.

·         Work was taking place to develop an alternative way of delivering the Workplace Wellbeing Charter to local employers following a decision by the scheme provider to stop providing the scheme through external providers.  This could impact on the work taking place in Surrey Heath and work was taking place with partners to identify ways that would enable continued access to the Charter.

·         It was acknowledged that more needed to be done to raise awareness of the work that partners were doing through the Health and Wellbeing Board and it was agreed that the matter would be raised at the Board’s next meeting.

The Committee thanked Tim Pashen for his update.