The Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing introduced a report by the Director of Public Health / Head of Policy and Performance which informed Cabinet that in June 2013 a non-recurrent underspend was identified within the public health grant for 2013-15. This had arisen because of preparing for future scenarios in relation to the likely size of the public health grant for 2015 onwards, the sum of which was as yet unknown. With the support of the Portfolio Holder it was suggested that consideration be given to seeing how the underspend could be used to benefit the local population through investing in other areas across the Council, thereby enabling them to contribute further to the delivery of public health outcomes as defined by the national Public Health Outcomes Framework. 

As a result, all strategic directorates were invited to submit proposals for non-recurrent spend which would then be assessed for their public health impact and prioritised for investment.

On 8 August 2013, all applications (49 in total) were considered by a panel comprising the Portfolio Holder, the Chief Executive and the Director of Public Health. All submissions stated how the activity would contribute towards achievement of indicators from Department of Health’s Public Health Outcomes Framework. Twenty eight applications were assessed as meeting the criteria and twelve were deferred as further information was required. Following the receipt of the additional information and or revisions to the original proposals a high proportion of these were accepted as also meeting the criteria. Consequently, 38 proposals with a total value of £3,419,788 across 2013-14 and 2014-15 financial years had been assessed as relevant to public health outcomes.

An appendix to the report gave details of those proposals which had been assessed together with the relevant funding requested.

Councillor Chris Meaden also suggested that there were many small groups who had previously had some funding from Area Forums, and with the Constituency Committees not being fully operational in making grants as yet, an emergency fund could be established for these smaller groups to apply to. The Director of Public Health / Head of Policy and Performance informed the Cabinet that she would investigate this suggestion further and bring a proposal back for consideration.

RESOLVED: That

(1)  the reinvestment of the public health grant funding as outlined in Appendix 1 to the report be approved; and

(2)  it be noted that the progress and spend will be monitored by Public Health on a regular basis; and

(3)  it be noted that the proposals will be evaluated against their Public Health outcomes in May/June 2015.