Agenda item

To consider a report from the Interim Director for Communities, a copy is attached as item 8.

Before the Committee was a report by the Director for Communities, copies of which had been circulated to all Members and a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of these minutes as Item 8.

The report presented ‘HealthyAW 2021-2024’, which set the Council’s focus for health and wellbeing in Adur and Worthing and the Councils’ ambition for thriving communities and places.  This built upon the previous Public Health Strategy 2018 - 2021 and was set for two and a half years to be aligned to the overarching West Sussex County Council’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Adur and Worthing Councils had played an important leadership role in health and wellbeing for many years, using its influence with its partners and its work with communities and businesses to affect change.  It formed a key commitment to be creative and bold to create more thriving communities and places.

The District and Borough Councils held key responsibilities and opportunities with regards to public health, with respect to provision of housing, public realm and green spaces and furthermore the work on the Climate Emergency. The Councils’ Thrive platforms were a key element of their work on wellbeing.  More generally the Councils’ roles as leaders of place meant that they could and should be putting the wellbeing of their communities at the heart of what they do.

This strategy had been written to reflect some of the national and local challenges the Councils faced, and built on the learning from COVID-19.  It was a post-pandemic strategy for health and wellbeing and aimed to build greater fairness into its work, to double down on inequalities and ensure that whilst it was working with all of its communities it was working more with those that had been hardest hit.  Importantly it built on the community spirit and action that the Councils had seen in communities and sought to amplify this through more participatory approaches.

HealthyAW built on and around the ambitions in Platforms for our Places, by creating the conditions for people to thrive. It had been shaped by national and local data around health, and the communities response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The strategy set out some key principles for how the Councils’ wanted to do this work and proposed three high level ambitions for the broad direction of it, which had been shaped through engagement with partners, staff and communities:

1.1.      To improve health and wellbeing for all, focusing mostly on our communitieswith the poorest health and wellbeing

1.2       To create places, spaces and environments that promote and enable good health and wellbeing

1.3       To promote stronger community resilience in our communities and our

workforce

The adoption of the strategy would provide the focus for the Councils’ efforts for the next two and half years.  The details for this work would be set out in a delivery plan to be shaped in the Autumn.

Members welcomed the proposed strategy and looked forward to receiving the delivery plan at the JSC meeting in November 2021.

The Committee also wished to place on record its thanks to Councillor Simmons for all his work on the Health & Wellbeing portfolio and for his work supporting Councillor Boram into his role as portfolio holder.

Decision

The Joint Strategic Committee

i)          considered and approved the adoption of HeathyAW as the Councils Health & Wellbeing Strategy for 2021-2024; and

ii)         noted the development of a delivery plan to be developed in Autumn 2021.

Call In:

The call-in deadline for decision will be 5.00pm on 17 September 2021.