Tough questioning on alcohol, obesity and drugs

A new policy and approach to tackling inequalities in public health and wellbeing across Staffordshire… 

It was a good committee session, which you can see by clicking the video capture, during which I was questioned for two hours on the way we plan to tackle some of the most pressing health issues which not only ruin lives but cost hundreds of millions of pounds to the public purse here in Staffordshire.

The Staffordshire Public Health policy which I inherited from Labour expired four months ago and I was presented with an updated version to sign off at that time.

But although it was a high quality attractive document it seemed pretty insular to me and I couldn’t figure out how it would dramatically counter the poor state of general health and wellbeing of some of the population in Staffordshire.

Some things such as smoking, childhood obesity and unhealthily heavy drinking are issues across a wide spectrum of people. And in some specific geographical areas and socio-economic groups it is even more prevalent and those same cohorts often have lower life expectancy as well as an alarming level of infant mortality.  

The strategy that officials were asking me to approve was weak on aspiration and it seemed to me that if we did almost nothing over the coming years on the public health agenda we’d broadly meet what the document was about, such was its lack of substance. 

Labour’s legacy in Staffordshire… broadly going through the motions, ticking some boxes, not excelling and not utterly failing was the thrust of what was presented to me. 

So, I didn’t accept it and we are now in the midst of developing a new Strategy which has tougher expectations and will hold each part of the public sector firmly to account like never before on meeting their responsibilities.  And with a very strong overarching approach to ensuring all agencies have the same focus and priorities it is different to anything Staffordshire has seen in the past.

It’s about having high expectations for our county and its people, being clear and realistic about what we can affect in the long, medium and short term and, on the latter, using those shorter term successes to provide motivation toward the more difficult and generational outcomes.

And I’m delighted to say that officials are shaking off  ‘the Labour way’. There’s genuine passion and determination creeping in with greater aspiration and clearer vision.

With the Health Committee stage now completed, the next eight weeks will see further refinements to the Public Health and Wellbeing Strategy with Staffordshire’s Cabinet due to accept it as formal policy in October.

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