By Richard Johnstone in Birmingham | 30 June 2011
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has announced that the Department of Health will provide £1m to cover the start-up costs of council-based health and wellbeing boards.
Speaking at the Local Government Association's annual conference this morning, he said that development money would support the ‘network and learning arrangements’ of setting up the boards.
Health and wellbeing boards form part of the government’s NHS reforms and will be set up once the Health and Social Care Bill becomes law. Lansley said they would have a critical role in integrating council and NHS public health and social care services.
He said they would be in place with ‘legal and budgetary powers’ by April 2013, but he called on local authorities not ‘to wait until then’ to implement changes, including the development of local health improvement plans.
Lansley told the conference that each council should have a public health budget alongside their health improvement plan, which would take account of wider determinants of health, such as economic activity and transport use. ‘We are basing the NHS on the idea that local leaderships alongside clinical leaderships will have a transformative effect,’ he said.
‘We know it has to be national, to have a national standard and viewpoint, but we know that it will be better if it’s clinically led and locally led, and we will look to make that happen.’
The health secretary also confirmed to the conference that the Dilnot Commission on the future funding of social care would report next week.
Lansley said that the review would not provide all the answers but would be ‘clear what will not work’.
He added: ‘The idea of the taxpayer paying for free care for everybody, that moment has gone. But there are trade-offs; what can be afforded by the taxpayer and how much can be afforded by the individual and families.
‘We’re going to engage fully in what Andrew Dilnot has to say. After years of debate and false starts and things being pushed to the sidelines, we are going to look to a social care system that is supported financially in the long run.’
