Agenda item

The meeting received a report on proposals to strengthen the partnership between health and housing, summarising the potential opportunities to develop strategic partnerships with all local housing providers to support an integrated health and wellbeing improvement offer.  The approach acknowledged evidence for the links between good housing and good health, with the partnership allowing a targeted approach to help tackle fuel poverty, falls prevention, excess winter deaths, social isolation and homelessness.

The meeting discussed the desirability of a social prescribing approach to identify if there were underlying housing issues that gave rise to poor health and then to target resources to tackle these issues.  The meeting noted the importance of developing the evidence base from the current Housing Strategy to provide a basis for allocating health resources to targeted measures to improve the housing stock.  The development of the Sustainability and Transformation Plan would provide a vehicle to deal with these issues, but subject to developing the evidence base.

The meeting noted that almost 31,000 private sector dwellings were classified as not meeting the Decent Homes Standard.  Whilst the lack of significant resources to bring these properties up to standard was acknowledged, the meeting commented on the importance of having plans in place to at least make some progress on tackling these issues.  The meeting noted that the Housing Strategy included options and approaches in relation to the private sector housing stock, which would make a difference if resources were available.  The intention of the partnership was to examine how resources could indeed be better targeted.

RESOLVED:-

(i)        that the development of a Stronger Health and Housing Partnership to better address shared health and housing outcomes be supported;

(ii)       that the positioning and embedding of housing tenure and housing need into existing pathways and support service provision, to enable people to access practical preventative support measures tailored to their needs, be supported, with the proposed new Social Prescribing Liaison Service acting as an intermediary through which health and social care professionals provide support and signposting for relevant housing advice and support;

(iii)      that, subject to budget availability, Health and Wellbeing Board partners be encouraged to better align resources with the Council to take forward front-line practical support measures and consider joint investment proposals to strengthen bids to finance interventions to address health and housing issues;

(iv)      that partner organisations be encouraged to share data and intelligence to strengthen funding bids and better target front-line service delivery;

(v)       that relevant health and social care agencies be asked to nominate representatives to serve on the Housing and Health Task Group, which will monitor the impact of the proposals in the report; and

(vi)      that the development of a local Memorandum of Understanding, setting out those areas in which partners will cooperate and work together to better tackle health and housing issues, be supported, together with a commitment to work on the key principles for the agenda as set out in the report now submitted.