Agenda item

Sean Murphy reported that his presentation to the Board would look at how closely Trading Standards and Public Health linked together. Trading Standards had worked very closely with Public Health over the past five years.

Trading Standards worked to the National Intelligence model of delivery. Its Service Plan was broken down into areas of prevention, intelligence and enforcement. There were specific areas of work which fell within the Public Health remit and would contribute towards targets within the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Trading Standards were responsible for many areas of the food chain, for example they had recently been included in activity pertaining to the horse meat scandal.

The service carried out much work to ensure high quality standards were met on food however, work still needed to take place to ensure people fully understood food labels.

Trading Standards supported numerous healthy eating programmes within schools, which helped to tackle childhood obesity in the district. A popular programme involved helping young people to prepare nutritious snacks. Many of the health eating initiatives targeted those in need such as low income families and were well received by the Food Standards Agency.

Trading Standards worked with retailers to help ensure healthy options were offered as part of menus through offering training and an award incentive scheme. A food hygiene course had been run for many years, however, Sean Murphy reported that the damage caused through unhealthy food was much more significant.

The approach to healthy eating was changing. The Government were pushing for the food industry to change as a whole and for this to be initiated at a local level by Local Authorities in order to improve standards.

Sean Murphy moved onto the next priority under the Health and Wellbeing Strategy ‘Supporting those over 40 years old to address lifestyle choices detrimental to health’, which also fell within the remit of Trading Standards. Much work was carried out around the smuggling of tobacco, as schemes to reduce smoking by increasing the price of cigarettes were undermined by this. A lot of smuggled alcohol had also been seized in the past. The main issue currently being tackled by Trading Standards was ‘legal highs’ (drugs that could be obtained from the internet for example), these were regularly banned however, new ones were created as quickly as the bans were implemented.

Sean Murphy reported that debt had huge implications on a person’s mental health and Trading Standards were currently undertaking a large project with the credit union which included identifying organisations which were miss selling loans.

Sean Murphy reported that Trading Standards worked to promote independence. It was important that care homes provided the correct nutritional standards so that elderly people were not receiving too little or alternatively too high a level of salt and calories. Crime was considered a major barrier to independence. Trends supported that there was an ageing population and it was the elderly who often became isolated and primarily the victims of crime.

Sean Murphy referred to the Trading Standards Service Plan and reported that in the future there would be an extra column included which showed links to the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Rachael Wardell noted that there was a lot of joint working taking place between Trading Standards and other services however, was aware that no links with housing had been mentioned. She also felt that there was potential for a piece of work in care homes to investigate the nutritional value of food being served.

Rachael Wardell referred to safeguarding, which was most evident with adults in the care homes and with those living with children. She felt that there was the potential for any service which accessed homes to act as the eyes and ears on behalf of the authority and to flag up any concerns to the relevant services.

Sean Murphy noted Rachael’s comments regarding housing and confirmed he would pick it up. He agreed that safeguarding was a Local Authority responsibility not just Adult Social Care.

Leila Ferguson spoke on behalf of West Berkshire Mencap and stated that many of the people using the service were very vulnerable. Mencap made every effort to promote healthy choice when it came to food, however, influence was limited. She also referred to organisations which handed out Pay Day Loans and was surprised that those using the Mencap Service were granted them, as the company would rarely receive the money back.

Sean Murphy was asked if Pay Day Loans were legal and he confirmed that they were however, organisations providing them would be breaching regulations if they were to offer numerous Pay Day Loans to a single person.

Councillor Graham Pask noted that there was currently a large amount of advertising for bingo, which was a low level form of gambling. Sean Murphy reported that locally all gambling premises were licensed by the Local Authority. He confirmed that recently regulations had been lifted ensuring people gave 24 hours notice prior to playing bingo.

Councillor Graham Jones thanked Sean Murphy for his presentation, which demonstrated how broard the Health and Wellbeing agenda was. It had also been made very clear how Trading Standards integrated into the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. Regarding discussions around Pay Day Loans, Councillor Jones reported that West Berkshire Council supported the Berkshire Credit Union.