Agenda item

Questions from County Councillors

Any county councillor may, by giving notice to the Proper Officer by 9 am two working days before the meeting, ask a question on any matter in respect of the Cabinet’s delegated powers.

 

The number of questions which may be asked by any councillor at any one meeting is limited to two (or one question with notice and a supplementary question at the meeting) and the time for questions will be limited to 30 minutes in total. As with questions at Council, any questions which remain unanswered at the end of this item will receive a written response.

 

Questions submitted prior to the agenda being despatched are shown below and will be the subject of a response from the appropriate Cabinet Member or such other councillor or officer as is determined by the Cabinet Member, and shall not be the subject of further debate at this meeting. Questions received after the despatch of the agenda, but before the deadline, will be shown on the Schedule of Addenda circulated at the meeting, together with any written response which is available at that time.

Minutes:

Councillor Phillips had given notice of the following question to Councillor Hibbert Biles:

 

‘I am disappointed to note in the Business Management and Monitoring Report Q3 that all Public Health indicators are below target. How long is the Cabinet Member going to tolerate this situation and when can we expect targets to be met in the following areas ?
-       % of Primary School children classed as obese in Year 6
-       % of people offered a health check who have taken up the offer
-       Number of people who have received a health check that were identified as high cardiovascular risk
-       Support 3800 people to become ‘’4 week quitters per annum
-       Number of opiate users who left drug treatment successfully who do not represent for treatment again within 6 months as a percentage of the total number of non-opiate users in treatment
-       Number of non-opiate users who left drug treatment successfully who do not represent again within 6 months as a percentage of the total number of non-opiate users in treatment’

Councillor Hibbert Biles replied:

 

“The Cabinet member does not tolerate the situation, but has deliberately approved ambitious targets through the Health and Wellbeing Board to help the many organisations who are responsible to take a serious approach to Public Health issues and so keep an upward pressure on improvement.. The red targets should therefore be seen as the cabinet's fearless determination to tackle these problems head -on. The truth is that either Oxfordshire is already successful compared with elsewhere or is taking vigorous and successful action to improve the health of local people.

 

For example:

Childhood obesity: Oxfordshire already is well ahead of the national average and obesity is low (16.9% compared with 19.1%.). Obesity is everyone's business and all individuals, families and organisations have a role to play. The target is deliberately ambitious to encourage partners such as schools and District councils to continue to play their part. We have worked closely with schools to make sure that a very high proportion of our children are weighed and measured each year, and we believe that this thoroughness makes Oxfordshire's figure slightly higher than in authorities where more children opt out of the test.

 

Health checks: we have the best performance on health checks in the Region and outstrip national performance (48.3%  for Oxfordshire compared to 47.5% for Thames Valley and 46.4% for England). We pay general practices to carry out these checks and we keep the target ambitiously high to get the best performance from general practice and so give the people of Oxfordshire the best value for money. Oxfordshire has used an innovative approach to monitoring these contracts and is a leader on the national stage.

 

Smoking cessation: There has been a national trend which has shown a 20% fall in successful quitters across the board In 2014/15 and the numbers of smoking quitters in Oxfordshire followed this trend.. We were not complacent about this however and so we have let a new ambitious contract from the 1st April 2015, and expect to see improvements from the new service provider who won the contract. In short, we saw a national problem which was reflected locally and have taken the proper action to improve matters.

 

Opiate and non-opiate abstinence. The Council inherited this service from the NHS when performance was very poor indeed. Since the service has been under Council management, it has been completely overhauled and as a result, performance is steadily improving. As part of this programme of improvement, we have just successfully concluded a major initiative to re-let the main contract for adult services and the new service started on the 1st April 2015. We have kept the target deliberately high as a statement of ambition and to show our commitment to service improvement.”

 

Supplementary: With regard to childhood obesity Councillor Phillips welcomed that a high proportion of our children are weighed and measured each year and asked having found out the position what happened next. Councillor Hibbert Biles replied that they continued to be weighed and measured.

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