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Public health settlement is more generous than expected but basing allocations on historic spend will leave some councils out of pocket There has been both excitement and anxiety around the transfer of public health to local government this month. Unfortunately the excitement has mainly been in local government and most of the anxiety in the public health world. People working in sexual health have probably expressed more anxiety than most and they have raised two main concerns. While there are all real risks, there is also a great opportunity to build upon the successes of recent years and take...

Read the advice of our expert panel on how local authorities can prepare for taking on responsbility for public health next month. Share your ideas in the comments thread Edward Davie is a Lambeth councillor and chair of the borough's health scrutiny committee What can be done to prepare? Councils need to engage with their communities by finding out what people want and how they can deliver it. In Lambeth, our commissioning model is being changed to a co-operative one where residents actively participate in decision making and contribute to delivery. This is particularly important in health...

At the final debate in a series of four on responsibility for public health in England transferring to local councils, professionals in the sector discussed how they hoped the move would tackle inequalities. The impending new public health system has an historic opportunity to tackle glaring health inequalities but the recession, welfare changes and shrinking workforces may mean progress does not match professionals' ambitions in this vital area. That was the consensus at the fourth Guardian Public Health Dialogue event, held recently in London, to debate key issues around public health's...

There's much to commend Andy Burnham's vision, but sharing the cash pool won't achieve integration – it's a culture thing If there is one lesson that can be drawn from Andrew Lansley's health reforms, it is that anyone proposing a major shakeup of the NHS should be required to provide compelling and overwhelming evidence that it is the right thing to do. This is the lens through which the idea of shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, to hand about £63bn of health service commissioning to local government should be judged. In a speech to the King's Fund on Thursday outlining...

Government must hand control of health to councils if it wants the results communities desperately need to see The challenges facing local government in 2013 are not too dissimilar to the drivers behind the first public health act in 1848. The aim then was to tackle extreme vulnerability as well as enabling improved general wellbeing. The specifics may have changed but the principles have not. What has changed is the sheer scale of the challenge. You could say that a perfect storm is heading for local government: a combination of growing demand, due to our ageing population and poor economic situation...

The push by local councils to outsource services is proving a boon for the social enterprise sector As councils across the country sell vast chunks of social care, state services are increasingly offered by private contractors suffering from low pay, long working hours and high turnover. Many local authorities feel they are left with little option . The alternative that has emerged is social enterprise. And in the social care sector, social enterprises are increasingly competing on price with the private sector while out-performing on quality. Social enterprise within social care is not a new phenomenon...

Booklet aims to help new Healthwatch bodies and health and wellbeing boards to collaborate on NHS service delivery The Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) and the Local Government Association (LGA) have published a practical e-guide to help new independent health watchdogs collaborate on reform. Practical measures are set out for how councils' health scrutiny committees can work with new health and wellbeing boards and Local Healthwatch , which will represent the views of the public and people who use services on the new health and wellbeing boards set up by local authorities. Local Healthwatch...