A Report setting out the rationale for altering the current arrangements for public health across Wokingham, Reading and West Berkshire.

The Executive Director of Social Care and Health submitted a report which set out the rationale for altering the current arrangements for public health across Wokingham, Reading and West Berkshire.

The report explained that the proposal was to dissolve the current arrangement between the six local authorities and move to an arrangement between West Berkshire Council, Reading Borough Council and Wokingham Borough Council.  A shared Director of Public Health role for Berkshire West would lead the public health system and would work closely with the local authorities and partners in the Berkshire West Integrated Care Partnership.  There would also be a Hub Team that would provide health intelligence, health protection and commissioning support to support public health teams in each local authority.  The report proposed that the Director of Public Health and Hub were hosted by Reading Borough Council for practical transport reasons.  The opportunities of working in partnership across the Berkshire West footprint was to:

·         Improve the health of the population and reduce inequalities to improve outcomes for residents and reduce demand for services;

·         Retain the local nature or public health, enabling local needs to be prioritised;

·         Improve the value from investment in public health capacity, to make it more visible, engaged, integrated and, most importantly, effective across the local authorities;

·         Effectively aligning Public Health with the Integrated Care Partnership with more strategic leadership capacity from the Director of Public Health;

·         Improving the information and intelligence the Council had to improve the health of the population, integrating it with the Integrated Care Partnership;

·         Improving value for money from Public Health contracts.

The three local authority Chief Executives would take collective responsibility for recruiting and supporting the role and they would all sign-off an annual work programme and carry out their Director’s appraisal together.  The role would have director level influence in each local authority and would be a ‘top table’ position, have access to the Chief Executive and Lead Councillors and be party to resource and priority decisions.  The Director of Public Health would have leadership of the delivery of a joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy which would be the guiding Strategy for the Integrated Care Partnership as well as the Health and Wellbeing Boards.  The Director would be the Senior Responsible Officer for public health Integrated Care Partnership programmes and would be able to influence any collective Strategy for procurement and although they would not line manage all the local Public Health Consultants, they would provide professional supervision, influence their work programmes and participate in their appraisal.

Resolved –

(1)     That the current set up be dissolved upon a date to be agreed and for Reading Borough Council to host a new shared service on behalf of the Berkshire West System;

(2)     That the Executive Director of Adult Social Care and Health Services, in consultation with the Lead Councillor for Health, Wellbeing & Sport and the Chief Executive, be delegated authority to agree the proposed model of devolved Public Health to the Berkshire West footprint.