A £200m boost to public health services has been announced by the Government.
The 5.4% increase (a real terms rise of 3%) for the Public Health Grant takes funding for family and school nurses, sexual health clinics and other public health services to £3.9bn.
Minister for public health and prevention, Andrew Gwynne, said: ‘After a decade of cuts to public health, this Government is committed to shifting the focus of healthcare from sickness to prevention, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is.’
The investment is a key part of the Government’s Plan for Change, shifting the focus from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention to build a more sustainable, fit for future NHS.
Adam Briggs, senior policy fellow at the Health Foundation, said the announcement was a ‘welcome first step in putting prevention back at the heart of the Government's agenda and one we have long called for’.
David Buck, senior fellow at The King’s Fund, cautioned that with the Government yet to announce separate council budgets for drug and alcohol services it was ‘hard to say if there will be an overall increase in council public health budgets, but today’s announcement is a positive sign’.
Dr Layla McCay, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, said a ‘shift from one-off pots of funding to longer-term and more coordinated funding cycles across departments is needed so that local authorities can work alongside the NHS to truly improve health outcomes in their communities’.
Cllr David Fothergill, chairman of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, called for a ‘long-term sustainable funding plan for public health’ to be set out in the Spending Review to ‘give councils the long-term certainty they need to plan services that meet the needs of their communities’.
Nuffield Trust chief executive Thea Stein said: ‘Ultimately, how far today’s boost will really go depends on what happens to staff wages, which can quickly eat up funding in these services, and whether traditionally separate funding for drug and alcohol services sits within this extra money.’
Lee Peart is editor of Hemming Group’s Healthcare Management magazine.
