Report of the Director Public Health attached

The report of the Director of Public Health explained how the budget proposals for the Directorate had been developed.

The 2022/23 budget process saw the Council develop savings and efficiency plans of over £42.3m over the three years to 2025/26 of which there were savings options of £1m attributable to Public Health.  The provisional financial settlement announced on 19 December 2022 reflected a change in government policy in relation to funding inflation and social care pressures.  This had given the opportunity to review the quantum and phasing of savings and it was now proposed that options of £36.2m were progressed, of which £0.73m were attributable to the Public Health budget.

In the context of austerity and the national public health challenges post pandemic, the approach to the development of savings had been extremely difficult. The work had been informed by:

·                     The challenging position across a range of Public Health outcome measures with a worsening of health outcomes in Manchester since the pandemic;

·                     Reducing pressures on the wider health and social care system by ensuring that upstream cost effective prevention programmes were maintained;

·                     The need to protect the Drug and Alcohol service budget linked to new national investment conditions relating to the new national 10-year Drug Strategy, From Harm to Hope; and

·                     The scale of previous Public Health savings programmes.

Proposals had been identified as deliverable without impacting on delivery of public health commissioned services in the city and were summarised as follows:-

As per the Spending Review, it was announced the public health grant would remain the same in real terms which would significantly undermine the ability of local systems to reduce health inequalities without further investment in prevention by the NHS.  However current levels of inflation would significantly erode spending power unless a further increase in grant was confirmed.

If the proposed changes were approved, the three-year budget position would be as follows:-

The savings proposals would have a limited internal workforce impact due to the roles being disestablished being vacant and planned.  This was part of the wider review of roles and responsibilities as resource shifted back to business as usual after the heightened focus on COVID-19 for the last three years.

It was noted that the report had also been considered at a recent meeting of the Health Scrutiny Committee where the committee had endorsed the budget proposals (Minute HSC/23/09)

Decision

The Executive approve the budget proposalsas set out in the report.