Agenda and draft minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

There were no urgent items of business.

The minutes of the meeting held on 4 June 2024 were approved as a correct record.

There were no matters arising.

QUESTIONS: If you would like to ask a question you must arrive 15 minutes before the start of the meeting to provide the clerk with your name, address and the question you would like to ask. Alternatively, you can provide this information by email to the clerk at committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk at least two hours ahead of a meeting. The subject matter of questions must relate to an item on the Board’s agenda for that particular meeting. The clerk can provide advice on this where requested.

PETITIONS: A petition must be submitted a minimum of seven working days before a Board meeting and must be given to the clerk by this deadline. There must be a minimum of ten signatures for a petition to be submitted to the Board. The subject matter of a petition must be about something that is within the Board’s responsibilities. This includes matters of interest to the Board as a key stakeholder in improving the health and wellbeing of communities.

There were no submissions of Public Participation.

To monitor delivery of the Health & Wellbeing Strategy.

Heema Shukla, Interim Director of Public Health presented an update on the Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and a deep-dive into Priority 4: Keep residents safe from infectious disease.

On the wider Health and Wellbeing Strategy, Heema updated the Board that there was good work going on across all priorities, and there were lots of good actions reflected in the dashboard across partner organisations. A key area of focus remained the self-harm prevention toolkit. The Berkshire-wide suicide prevention strategy was progressing well, but it was not clear what the local iteration of a self-harm prevention toolkit would look like.

Board members raised the following points on the Health and Wellbeing Strategy:

·        Nicola Airey highlighted that it was World Suicide Prevention Day. It was noted that this year’s theme aims to raise awareness about the importance of reducing stigma and encouraging open conversations to prevent suicides. It hopes to create a shift from a culture of silence and a lack of understanding to one of openness, empathy, and support. Nicola offered to share a brief training link (20mins) that had been shared with ICB staff produced by Zero Suicide Alliance (Action: Nicola Airey)

·        Officers were looking into an interactive tool to assess granular data on eating disorders across the borough.

·        Board members queried how the success of mental health schools teams was being measured.

·        Following an unsuccessful bid by Youthline to pursue the Happiness Hub work, officers were investigating how mental health support for children could be improved. Ideas included using South Hill Park arts centre or similar to support neurodiverse children.

·        Officers sought to achieve equality across all lifestyle services, such as smoking cessation.

Heema continued on to cover a deep-dive into Priority 4: Keeping residents safe from infectious diseases, including pregnancy and newborn immunisations, adult immunisations and screening services. Overall, there was positive assurance for the Board on local immunisation and screening services.

Bracknell Forest was performing well on its pregnancy and newborn programmes compared to national, South East and East Berkshire data. The timeliness of newborn and infant physical examination was the only area of note, and this was improving.

Some adult screening programmes were only just meeting the lower threshold but were still performing better than national standards.

Heema commented that it was important to remember that if cancer screening services caught cancer early by bringing in the at-risk populations, it could reduce the impact of cancer later on.

On childhood immunisations, Heema commented that if 95% of the population were vaccinated, herd immunity would be attained.

There were plans for a new RSV vaccination for 75 to 79 year olds and pregnant women from 1 September 2024, which would be delivered by GP surgeries and maternity services respectively.

Heema commented on the need to focus on flu vaccinations for those with co-morbidities. The flu vaccination rate was low in Bracknell Forest and could be improved.

Work was underway with Frimley ICB to establish how certain communities could be better engaged to reduce vaccination and screening uptake  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18.

Hayley Edwards, ICB Dentistry Senior Transformation Manager and Michelle Ross, South East Dental Commissioning Hub joined the meeting to update on the role of Frimley ICB in provision of dental services.

The Health and Wellbeing Board had initially asked whether Children Looked After had sufficient access to dental services. The matter had been investigated with key officers from Bracknell Forest Council and was no longer an issue.

Pharmacy, Optometry and Dental (POD) services had passed over from NHS England to ICB remit in July 2023 to give a greater focus on local needs. In the Frimley footprint, attendance at dental appointments was improving since COVID.

Dental contracts had a combined budget of £35m. Dentists would sometimes hand back their NHS contracts to only undertake private work. In Frimley, there had only been two hand-backs in four years, and the majority of this activity had been reprocured. Dentist recruitment challenges locally were reflective of the national picture.

The government had launched a national dental recovery plan to focus on increasing capacity, however it was stressed that not all of its elements would apply to Frimley where dental access and recovery is better than some other parts of the country. National schemes to increase capacity included the Golden Hello Scheme which encouraged dentists to join areas of historic recruitment challenges, resilience support packages and a 10% over-performance payment.

The picture of patient access in the Frimley system was improving across the board, including amongst Children Looked After. Work was being undertaken with general dental practitioners to target areas where the need was greatest, including addressing urgent access.

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·        Board members queried how local providers could learn from national programmes to apply any learning in a targeted approach, and what the relationship was between local and national programmes. It was clarified that the small local dental public health team had lots of input into procurement processes. The team were reflecting on the way general dental services were commissioned and were looking for ways to use data to better plan services. Transformation work on dental services across the ICB area was ongoing. It was agreed that connections between local public health teams and the dental public health team should be strengthened.

·        It was challenging to ascertain the number of residents who did not have access to dental treatment, as many people accessed private dental provision.

·        Patients were asked to complete a form when they saw their dentist, however this form did not include any questions on risk factors or co-morbidities to undertake preventative work.

·        Internal meetings had been held to address issues raised around Children Looked After and children with disabilities accessing dental care. The discussion had shown that the capacity was there for these children, and any issues were due to lower uptake amongst older children 15 and over.

·       Work on an oral needs assessment of older adults was going on with the dental team.

To receive an update on the site selection process for the new Frimley Park Hospital. Please note: presenters will not be able to provide information on the preferred sites in this meeting.

Cain Thomas, Interim Programme Director for the new Frimley Park Hospital and Robyn Jarrett, Assistant Director of Engagement at Frimley Health presented an update on the site selection progress for the new hospital.

The new government had recently announced a full review of the new national hospital programme, however while the review was underway, priority hospitals with RAAC would continue to be delivered, including Frimley Park.

Around 65% of the hospital building was built with RAAC, which was deteriorating. Since 2019, extensive work had been undertaken to keep the hospital safe for staff and patients to a total cost of £30m by the end of this financial year. High-risk areas such as ICU and operating theatres had already been dealt with, and paediatric wards were being completed in the Autumn. Operational continuity would be ensured while building the new hospital.

The new hospital on the new site would be in excess of 130,000sqm, and would cost over £1 billion to build. The new hospital was required to be ready for 2030. Health colleagues were working to determine the number of inpatient and community beds which would be required to support the new hospital.

The site selection process had begun in Summer 2023 when a land agent had been engaged to look for possible sites. The long list of sites had been appraised, alongside an engagement exercise with staff, patients and the community on what was important to them. The preferred sites were now being assessed against particular criteria, and the key risks and opportunities on each site had been identified. Local planning and highways authorities had been engaged on the preferred sites. The preferred sites remained confidential while existing land use was assessed.

The next steps for the process would be to further develop the equalities impact assessment on each site, and to undertake further ecological and environmental work on the preferred sites.

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·        While an indicative timeline was being followed, it was not possible to confirm how long the site selection process would take.

·        The project was currently at the land purchasing stage and not yet considering design for the new hospital.

·        While the significant areas of the hospital had been addressed, there remained a significant amount of remedial work to undertake.

·        It was clarified that RAAC schemes were exempt from the review being undertaken by the government.

Robyn advised Board members of the engagement work which was being undertaken. Health colleagues were committed to engaging with staff, patients, volunteers and communities and had developed equality and inclusion principles to gather the views of under-represented communities. Healthwatch colleagues were supporting with co-design work and were having conversations with communities with English as Additional Language, patients with additional communication requirements, carers, and service users in deprived areas. All the output of this work would feed into a communications and engagement programme and had fed into the site selection process for the priority sites.

The site selection process had also taken account of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20.

To receive an update on the new Place governance arrangements.

Nicola Airey and Grainne Siggins presented an update on the Place Governance arrangements.

Following a restructure within the ICB, a review of governance across the Place geography had been undertaken in July 2024.

In Bracknell Forest, officers were grateful that ICB colleagues agreed to retaining a unique governance structure albeit at a reduced capacity. This decision meant the retention of a Bracknell Forest Children and Young People’s Board including a Children and Young People’s plan, a Place Board and a local Health and Care Strategy. Implications for the Place Committee, and the Health and Wellbeing strategy were being discussed. 

Nicola and Grainne offered to provide further update on this at the next Board meeting. (Action: Nicola / Grainne)

This item was deferred to the next agenda as there was no representative from Healthwatch present.

Board members were reminded of Self Care Week at the end of October 2024.