Future Funding of Public Health or How Much Will LA's Get ?

Earlier this week, I attended the regular meeting of the Oversight & Scrutiny Committee for Health & Social Care for Sefton Council.  I think this is a fantastic committee that is chaired superbly by my lib dem colleague Anthony Hill.  The meeting on Tuesday included a presentation by Hannah Chellaswamy; Acting Director of Public Health (NHS Sefton  & Sefton Council ), Healthy Lives, Healthy People: Our strategy for public health in England

Basically under the new proposals the responsibility for public health will return once again to the Local Authorities, after an absence of 40 years. At the meeting there was an open and frank discussion around this during which I raised the question of funding since in my experience its always good to know where the money is. From April 2013 local authorities will receive a ring fenced public health budget however what I wanted to know is how this budget is going to be decided, effectively what funding formulae is going to be used to determine how much each LA would receive.

This question generated a debate around the various communities that make up Sefton however Hannah was at this stage unable to give a clear answer and it was agreed that this question would form part of the response from Sefton Council to the NHS white paper.

Imagine my delight then when later that evening I was able to pose exactly the same question to Paul Burstow MP Lib Dem Health Minister.

I have to say Paul understood exactly the point I was trying to make and agreed that he would look into the possibility of using the Super Output Area data from Indices of Multiple Deprivation to determinine the funding stream.

Now thats what I call communication!