The Director of Public Health, Kay Eilbert, introduced the item and said that she welcomed the opportunity to ask the Commission for help in embedding public health work across the council.

Kay Eilbert set out how the council worked on many of the influences on health, which offers significant opportunities to ensure that all council work has a positive impact on health. She said that health outcomes in Merton are generally good but there are significant inequalities within the borough.

Kay Eilbert stressed that public health have taken a two pronged approach in recognising the part played by individual choice but also working to help people to choose the healthy option – the slide on page 41 shows that this is more difficult when individuals face barriers such as unemployment, poor housing or lack of education. She said that the Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2015-18 has built on this approach - copies were handed out at the meeting and the strategy has been published on the council’s website.

Kay Eilbert and her colleague Amy Potter, Consultant in Public Health, provided additional information and clarification in response to questions:

·         discussions are taking place with service departments in order to progress the use of health impact assessments

·         the council is constrained by licensing and planning policy but there are powers that have been used by other boroughs (such as restricting clusters of fast food outlets) that could be introduced in Merton

·         work is being done to educate consumers and food outlets on using less fat, salt and sugar

·         the public health team has a good relationship with the licensing team and has been making representations on individual licence applications as well as commenting on a draft statement of licensing policy that is currently out for consultation

·         the community health champion scheme is another example of a successful approach

In response to questions about the Health and Wellbeing Strategy, Kay Eilbert said that progress reports would be taken to the Health and Wellbeing Board as the owner of this partnership strategy but reports could be provided to scrutiny too if required. Amy Potter added that some of the targets look modest because they relate to items with a worsening trajectory and the target has been set to stop this deterioration. Also a three year target period is a relatively short period of time against much longer term goals. Kay Eilbert said that every attempt has been made to model targets realistically.

The Chair suggested that more could be done by scrutiny to raise the profile of public health and that it would be useful to keep a watching brief on the work of the health and Wellbeing Board.

RESOLVED: the Commission requested that any subsequent reports to scrutiny should contain baseline data, targets and data setting out progress at key dates.