Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
22
Accepted
Department believes local authorities effectively commission public health services, despite regional performance variations.
Conclusion
While noting the variation in performance outlined in the NAO’s report, the Department told us that local authorities broadly did “a great job of commissioning public health services.” The Department told us that it had published a set of guidelines through OHID to give more help to local authorities commissioning these services. We heard that it was working hard to spread good practice and that it hoped that its focus and additional investment would improve performance across the board. The Department thought that completion rates, which had remained stable despite budget pressures, indicated that local authorities had done a very good job of maintaining quality.49 The Department explained that OHID had a budget of around £30 million to run national public health awareness campaigns. It told us that recent campaigns had included obesity, smoking and mental health and gave the example of the beginners’ running campaign, Couch to 5k, as one that had been very successful. The Department noted the success of campaigns around smoking and said it did not think the public had as clear an understanding around alcohol harm. We were told that choosing where to spend the budget for public health campaigns was a decision for Ministers.50 Treatment workforce
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to provide targeted support to local authorities. It committed to releasing a toolkit in Summer 2023 to help compare treatment numbers and identify referral pathway needs, and released a Local Outcomes Framework dashboard on 20 April 2023 for benchmarking performance.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Summer 2023 5.2 Although the number of people in alcohol treatment is currently increasing nationally, the department recognises the requirement to provide targeted support to local authorities where an area is not achieving its planned trajectories for increasing numbers in treatment. 5.3 The department will be releasing a toolkit in Summer 2023 which will help each local authority to compare treatment numbers to their estimated dependent populations and identify whether specific referral pathways need strengthening. The toolkit will also contain guidance on good practice to reduce the level on unmet need and target priority or under-served groups. 5.4 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 5.5 On 20 April 2023, the department released a Local Outcomes Framework dashboard to local authorities covering a range of outcomes, including rates of progress in treatment, completions of treatment, and deaths in treatment. 5.6 All the data presented in the dashboard will be benchmarked to enable national and regional comparisons. All outcomes framework measures will be analysed and interpreted alongside each other by the department to improve understanding nationally and locally of variation in performance between areas. 5.7 Using data in the Local Outcomes Framework dashboard and the unmet need toolkit the department will support local areas to understand their data and support them to take appropriate action, prioritising areas where success rates are particularly low, connecting them where appropriate to areas with better success rates to share good practice.