The Health and Wellbeing Board of Northumberland County Council met on Thursday 8 October 2026 to discuss the council's Community Promise initiative and its efforts to address health inequalities. The board also reviewed the new Northumberland Gambling Strategy, which aims to prevent and reduce gambling-related harms within the county, and agreed to monitor its progress in future meetings.

Community Promise

Ross Wigham, Director of Communications at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, presented an update on the Community Promise initiative. This programme, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, aims to leverage the Trust's position as a major employer and healthcare provider to positively impact the wider community. The initiative focuses on five core pillars: tackling inequalities, supporting education, fostering employment, influencing the economy, and promoting sustainability.

Key achievements highlighted included:

• Education: Engaging with approximately 10,000 students across Northumberland and North Tyneside to showcase the diverse range of employment opportunities within the NHS, which offers around 800 different roles. The Trust also provided year-round work experience placements for students, with a particular focus on those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
• Economy: A commitment to spending more locally, with over £30 million invested with local and regional suppliers. The Trust also hosted a procurement event that attracted over 300 local businesses.
• Health Inequalities: The Trust noted that 51% of its staff are from Northumberland, and 83% of its staff live in the areas they serve. This local connection is seen as a benefit to service performance. A Better Off Better Health programme was launched in partnership with Citizens Advice, offering financial advice to staff and patients to improve their health outcomes.

Councillor Eve Louise Chicken, Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Services, praised the initiative, noting its alignment with the council's corporate priorities. Questions from councillors focused on how other organisations could emulate or excel the Trust's work, particularly regarding apprenticeships and engaging with schools.

Health Inequalities: Fulfilling Our NHS Duty

Jill Harland, Consultant in Public Health and Head of Service, presented an overview of the Trust's work on health inequalities, emphasizing that addressing these disparities is a legal duty for the NHS. The presentation detailed the Trust's commitment to embedding equity into service design and delivery, ensuring equitable access, experience, and outcomes for all.

Key points from the presentation included:

• Annual Reporting: The Trust publishes annual reports on health inequalities, aligning with NHS England's requirements. These reports detail the extent to which the Trust is exercising its duty to address health inequalities and outline the actions being taken.
• Data Analysis: The Trust is developing sophisticated health inequalities reports and dashboards to analyse data through a health inequalities lens. This allows for a deeper understanding of performance across secondary care and community services, identifying disparities related to deprivation, sex, ethnicity, and rurality.
• Improvement Framework: A health inequalities improvement framework is used to guide work with clinical leads, focusing on understanding existing knowledge, identifying needs, and developing targeted interventions.
• Specific Initiatives: Examples of work included efforts to reduce non-attendance rates for appointments, particularly among vulnerable groups such as prisoners at HMP Northumberland, where non-attendance rates were significantly higher. The Trust is also piloting navigation services to help patients access healthcare and is reviewing patient experience data through an inequalities lens.
• Inclusive Equitable Healthcare Framework: This framework, with six pillars, aims to embed equity into the organisation's core functions, focusing on inclusion health groups, the impact of poverty, healthcare navigation, workforce development, and communication.
• Prevention: A strong emphasis is placed on prevention, aligning with the Northumberland Health and Wellbeing Strategy. The report highlighted that the burden of disease disproportionately affects the most disadvantaged, with a significant percentage of preventable deaths occurring in the most deprived areas.

Discussions during this item focused on the challenges of collecting and presenting data, the importance of partnership working, and the need to demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions. Councillors raised questions about the accessibility of healthcare travel cost schemes and the reasons behind higher non-attendance rates in certain demographics. The board also discussed the role of primary care and the potential for collaboration with the council's public health team.

Northumberland Gambling Strategy

Councillor Eve Louise Chicken, Cabinet Member for Adults' Services and Health, introduced the Northumberland Gambling Strategy. She highlighted that problematic gambling is a public health issue with significant consequences for individuals, families, and communities. The strategy focuses on prevention, early intervention, and reducing the stigma associated with gambling harms.

John Liddell, Senior Public Health Manager, and Faisal Yara, Public Health Registrar, provided a detailed overview of the strategy. They explained:

• Prevalence and Harms: Approximately 30% of adults in Northumberland participate in gambling, with 3.29% experiencing harm as a result. The strategy aims to address the significant health, social, and economic consequences of gambling harms, which can include debt, mental health deterioration, relationship breakdown, and increased risk of suicide.
• Industry Influence: The presentation noted the gambling industry's significant advertising spend and its tactics, which can normalize gambling and shift responsibility onto individuals. The strategy aims to counter these narratives by promoting an accurate understanding of the risks.
• Strategy Development: The strategy was developed through a collaborative process involving evidence review, stakeholder workshops, and input from individuals with lived experience of gambling harms.
• Strategic Priorities: The strategy is built around four key priorities:
  1. Maximising Assets: Strengthening early identification and ensuring timely, accessible support.
  2. Education: Building workforce capacity and capability, and increasing public awareness.
  3. Collaboration: Mobilising communities, effective partnership working, and promoting the voice of lived experience.
  4. Systemwide Approach: Promoting evidence-based practice and identifying opportunities related to regulation and advertising.
• Monitoring and Evaluation: The strategy includes clear action plans, governance structures, and mechanisms for monitoring progress and evaluating effectiveness. The board agreed to monitor progress against the strategy's objectives in future meetings.

The board engaged in a robust discussion about the strategy. Councillors acknowledged the social dangers of gambling and questioned the extent of gambling advertising. Concerns were raised about the government's reliance on gambling tax revenue. The role of making every contact count and how community policing might be involved in identifying gambling-related harms were also discussed. The psychological aspects of gambling and the importance of education, particularly for young people, were emphasized.

Other Business

The board noted its forward plan for upcoming meetings and received a brief update on urgent business concerning the Better Care Fund. Rachel Mitcheson, Director of Commissioning, explained a technical discrepancy in data collection that had led to a minor issue with performance metrics, which had since been resolved.

The next meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board was scheduled for Thursday, 12 November 2026.