Public Health Services

Overview

Since 2013, Southwark council has been responsible for Public Health (when it was transferred to us from the NHS). As with other councils, Southwark receives a specific Public Health grant from the government which is used to fund a range of services to improve the health and well-being of local residents. These include:

• Sexual health (testing, treatment and contraception)
• Health Visitors

Since taking responsibility for the services, we have been working closely with partners in the NHS, with patients, with service providers, with Public Health specialists and a range of other stakeholders to improve and transform these services so that they achieve the best outcomes for the money spent.

This work will continue this year but, unfortunately, the government has now announced that it is reducing the amount of money it gives to the council to fund these services and this requires us to pause our improvement work to address the immediate funding shortfall.

The government cut means we have a shortfall of around £1.6m this year and we will have further cuts to our Public Health grant each year between now and 2020.

Last financial year, the council covered the £670,000 cut to its Public Health grant from its reserves, but the money the council gets from government to run its other services keeps reducing so there is little possibility that the council can keep filling the gap in Public Health funding. As a result, we have to look for ways to spend less on Public Health while maintaining a good level of service and continuing to try to improve our residents’ health.

We would like to ask you to complete this short questionnaire to share your views with us on what your priorities around Public Health might be and help us decide how we should make the savings and manage with less money.

What happens next

Thank you for your interest but the consultation has now closed.

We will publish the results and our next steps here by the end of August.