The Adults, Health and Active Lifestyles Scrutiny Board met on 9 September 2025, to discuss the local implementation and impact of NHS reforms, the Director of Public Health Annual Report 2025, and the board's work schedule for the 2025/26 municipal year. Councillor Andrew Scopes, Chair of Scrutiny Board (Adults, Health and Active Lifestyles), proposed writing to the relevant Government Minister to emphasise the need to secure funding for a centralised, single-site maternity facility, and this was agreed by the board. The board also agreed that Councillor Scopes would write to the Chair of the Children and Young People's Partnership to request that the Partnership leads on further work regarding children and young people's use of smartphones and social media.

Director of Public Health Annual Report 2025

The board received the Director of Public Health Annual Report 2025 – 'Heat in the City: Our Health in a Warming Leeds'. The report focused on the effects of increasing temperatures on public health in Leeds, and how to protect people from environmental hazards and the spread of infectious diseases caused by rising temperatures.

The report highlighted three key areas:

• Unequal impacts of rising temperatures on health
• How rising temperatures can affect long-term health conditions
• Emerging risks: Vector borne infections and air quality

The report brought together lived experiences of Leeds residents, frontline workers, academic partners and subject matter experts alongside a review of national and local data and evidence relating to the impacts of heat on health. It stressed the importance of recognising the unequal impacts of heat on certain communities and the compounding impact that multiple vulnerabilities can create for some people.

Key findings included:

• Rising temperatures: Leeds has experienced significant increases in temperature over the last two decades, with the hottest years on record occurring since 2002. Since the 1980s, there has been an 87.5% increase in recorded summer days where temperatures reach or exceed 25°C in Leeds, with the frequency of hot summer days where temperatures reach or exceed 30°C tripling. The Met Office issued its first red extreme heat warning during the summer of 2022, when temperatures in West Yorkshire exceeded 40°C the first time on record.
• Impact on hospital admissions and mortality: National data suggests that on days when temperatures reach and exceed 25°C there is an increased demand on GPs and emergency departments for heat related illness leading to a potential 8,000 additional hospital admissions per year. Data gathered during previous heatwaves in England show GP demand is highest for children aged 4-14 and people aged 75 and over. The highest number of daily deaths was recorded on a summer day in 2022, coinciding with a Met Office 'Red Extreme' weather warning.
• Unequal impacts of heat: Personal, environmental, and social factors affect people's resilience during hot weather. Groups such as older adults, people with long term health conditions, young children, and those living in deprived, urban areas, are disproportionately at risk from the impacts of rising temperatures. People in low-income households often face additional challenges, such as less income to adapt their surroundings and an increased likelihood of having a long-term health condition and/or disability. Warmer weather can exacerbate the symptoms of existing respiratory and cardiovascular conditions. Medications taken for long term conditions such as diabetes can make it more difficult for people to keep cool during warmer weather.
• The Urban Heat Island Effect: Building materials such as concrete and asphalt retain heat more than natural surfaces, so urban areas can be hotter than rural ones. The Met Office predict that during a heat wave, inner city Leeds can be up to 8°C warmer than outer areas. Leeds has a densely populated city centre with the number of people living in inner-city areas increased by over 2,000 people between 2011 and 2021. Many wards within IMD1 are situated within the urban centre.
• Housing vulnerability: Housing conditions contribute significantly to the risks people face in extreme heat. Some building types such as high-rise flats and back-to-back housing, overheat more easily than others and may lack the facility for residents to effectively cool down and often have less access to gardens and outdoor green space.
• Emerging risks: Increasing temperatures mean that insects such as mosquitoes and ticks can increasingly thrive and breed in UK regions which increases the threat of diseases such as lyme disease, malaria, and West Nile. Pollen seasons are also becoming longer and more intense, because of warmer temperatures. More people are seeking medical support for a phenomenon called thunderstorm asthma where excessive pollen and particles are drawn in by higher winds and broken down by rain and humidity into more easily inhaled particles causing asthmatic symptoms.

The report made nine recommendations:

1. Leeds City Council, Leeds Health and Care Partnership¹, anchor organisations² and third sector to work collaboratively to promote and implement the advice and actions in the UK Health Security Agency Adverse Weather & Health Plan.
2. Leeds City Council, Leeds Health and Care Partnership, anchor organisations and third sector partners to work collaboratively to further improve access to cool spaces across the city by:
   • Building on and promoting Leeds cool spaces guidance with partners.
   • Ensuring there is a fair spread of cool spaces according to need across the city including community venues and seating in shaded areas.
   • Increasing public awareness of cool spaces.
3. Leeds City Council, Leeds Health and Care Partnership, and third sector partners to work together to review and increase opportunities for community engagement around the health impacts of increasing heat through the development of a city-wide action plan.
4. Academic partners to support citywide work to strengthen local research, evidence, and evaluation in relation to urban-heat mapping and climate vulnerability tools.
5. Leeds City Council will ensure that heat and health is considered in planning, particularly within densely populated inner-city areas by ensuring:
   • That planning applications are informed by ward specific heat data.
   • Health Impact of heat is included in health needs assessments.
   • Continued development of design guidelines for green spaces that are adaptable to the changing climate.
6. West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Leeds City Council will continue to work together to:
   • Identify opportunities for funding and investment in energy efficiency measures within Leeds housing stock.
   • Lobby for improvement in national policy around rental housing to ensure landlords are responsible for making improvements that protect against heat as well as cold.
7. Leeds City Council, Leeds Health and Care Partnership, anchor organisations, third sector and local businesses to work collaboratively to consider increased risk of vector borne diseases and heat for outdoor workers/workers at risk.
8. Health and Wellbeing Board to continue to address health inequalities via the Fairer, Healthier Leeds (Marmot City) and other health inequalities work.
9. Leeds City Council, Leeds Health and Care Partnership, anchor organisations, and third sector partners to develop skills and knowledge amongst frontline workforce in protecting people at increased risk from the adverse health impacts of heat.

The Director of Public Health Annual Report 2025 was submitted to the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) as part of the annual report competition and celebration, and Leeds was highlighted as one of the top 5 reports.

Local Implementation and Impact of NHS Reforms

The board received a report from the Section Head (Democratic Services) that presented a briefing paper by the Leeds Health and Care Partnership on the local implementation and impact of NHS reforms. The NHS and the broader health system are going through a significant period of change, with the UK government outlining its strategy to reform the NHS in England as part of its Ten-Year Health Plan published in July 2025.

The briefing paper updated the Scrutiny Board on three key pieces of work that are at the heart of the national Ten-Year Health Plan: neighbourhoods, place partnership development and Integrated Care Board (ICB) changes.

The Ten-Year Health Plan Summary included:

• From hospital to community: The plan envisions more care delivered closer to people's homes, including through expanded neighbourhood health services and facilities.
• From analogue to digital: The NHS will embrace new technologies and innovations to streamline processes, empower patients, and improve care delivery.
• From sickness to prevention: There's a strong focus on preventative care and tackling the root causes of ill health, aiming to reach patients earlier and promote healthier choices. This is closely linked to neighbourhood health.

The plan describes a number of important pieces of work that will need to be implemented to enable these shifts to take place: the neighbourhood health service, digital transformation, prevention and health inequality, clarity of accountability, workforce, innovation and productivity.

The plan underlines that many frequent A&E and GP attenders have unmet nonmedical needs such as, housing, financial advice, work or training, and calls for genuinely integrated local investment that adds up to more than separate parts. The importance of public health is recognised with a specific chapter focused on this.

Tim Ryley Accountable Officer (Leeds) West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (Leeds) presented the briefing paper.

Work Schedule

The Section Head (Democratic Services) submitted a report which presented the Board's latest draft work schedule for the forthcoming municipal year. The Chair explained that a number of key areas of interest were raised during the Board's last meeting and that efforts had therefore been made to try and reflect as many of these as possible into the draft work schedule while also ensuring that it remained manageable.

The latest Executive Board minutes from the meeting held on 16th July 2025 were also appended to the report for Members' information. While acknowledging that a 'Financial Health Monitoring' update report is considered at each Executive Board meeting, the Chair invited the Director of Adults and Health to briefly update the Scrutiny Board on the current financial position of the Adults and Health directorate.

The Board approved the Scrutiny Board's work schedule for the 2025/26 municipal year.