£5.82m in Public Health Funding cut from the Crawley area since 2015

Analysis from Crawley Labour Party has found that West Sussex County Council–Crawley’s Public Health Authority–has lost £5.82m in funding for local public health services over the last five years, which equates to a cut of 13.8% per cent, or 18.7% per person.

Cuts to West Sussex’s public health budget has meant that public health teams in have had to make difficult decisions about where they spend their money, alongside carrying out vital work to control the spread of COVID-19, including local outbreak planning, and crucially, promotional work to support the vaccine rollout.

Since 2021/22, the public health team (like all other public health teams in England) have also taken on responsibility for costs associated with the provision of the anti-HIV drug pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and services related to it.

Local public health teams are responsible for stop smoking services, sexual health services, health checks, public mental health, drug and alcohol services, children’s public health services, programmes to tackle obesity, amongst other key public health programmes. Their work is crucial because it supports people in our area to stay well, helps prevent health problems, and ultimately can saves the NHS billions of pounds per year in treating acute conditions.

A £5.82m cut to the team’s funding fails to prioritise this vital work, despite public health staff having spent years working flat out to tackle the worst public health crisis in a century.