The Health and Wellbeing Board of Shropshire Council scheduled a meeting for 18 September 2025, where members were expected to discuss winter preparedness, a healthy ageing strategy, and the Better Care Fund. The board was also scheduled to review the Director of Public Health’s annual report and receive updates on the Shropshire Integrated Place Partnership and the Integrated Care Board.

Winter Preparedness & Wellbeing

The Health and Wellbeing Board were scheduled to discuss winter preparedness and wellbeing support.

The agenda included an overview of the system's winter plan, which was scheduled to be presented to the Integrated Care Board (ICB) Public Board on 24 September 2025. The ICB was expected to approve the plan and agree to submit a statement of board assurance to NHS England by 30 September, a national requirement for all ICBs and NHS Trusts. According to the draft ICB report, the key points of the winter plan included:

• National direction received from NHS England.
• Progress on the urgent and emergency care pathway.
• Learning from winter 2024/25.
• Reasons for being better prepared to respond, with enduring high impact change schemes in place.
• A breakdown of the winter plan by time period, effects to be achieved, and specific interventions.
• The basis of providing assurance to the ICB Board and subsequently to NHS England.

Also included for discussion was a vaccination improvement plan, which included plans to maximise uptake of seasonal vaccinations. The strategic focus areas of this plan were scheduled to include:

• Maximising uptake of seasonal vaccinations such as flu, Covid booster, RSV¹, and MMR².
• Maintaining and building public confidence in the safety and importance of vaccines.
• Promoting convenience and accessibility of vaccination.
• Addressing barriers to uptake through targeted communications and engagement.
• Improving reach and impact by engaging diverse communities.
• Utilising NHS England resources to reinforce and amplify local communications.
• Ensuring easy-read and translated material for all vaccines.
• Aligning vaccination messaging with wider system campaigns.
• Using data to target resources to greatest areas of need and impact.

The board was also scheduled to discuss winter wellbeing support from Shropshire Council and VCSE[^4] partners, including cost of living support available to Shropshire residents. This included support from VCSE organisations, the council's Cost of Living web pages, and the Household Support Fund. Further in-person support and signposting was scheduled to be available from Shropshire Council's Community Wellbeing Outreach team, social prescribing services, and community and family hubs.

Healthy Ageing & Frailty Strategy

The Health and Wellbeing Board were scheduled to discuss a three-year strategy focused on the care and support of individuals who are living with, or at risk of developing, frailty as they age. The strategy sets out a vision for enabling people in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin to age well, by extending healthy life expectancy, reducing health inequalities, and enhancing quality of life through proactive, personalised, and compassionate care. The approach is rooted in a place-based, neighbourhood model that empowers communities to thrive at every stage of later life.

The strategy aims to prevent frailty and improve outcomes for people living with frailty by:

• Increasing healthy life expectancy
• Reducing health inequalities
• Enhancing the experience of patients and carers
• Slowing the growth in demand for health and care services

To achieve these aims, the strategy sets out the following objectives:

• Improve public and workforce understanding of frailty and awareness of available support services
• Delay the onset of frailty and reduce disparities in its development
• Slow the progression of frailty and address inequities in outcomes
• Enhance the quality of life for individuals with moderate to severe frailty
• Strengthen care coordination and planning for those with severe frailty through better use of digital tools
• Deliver services closer to home through a neighbourhood-based model
• Reduce unplanned care and emergency attendances related to frailty, thereby decreasing avoidable hospital admissions

The Healthy Ageing Strategy is structured around five interdependent pillars: Educate, Prevent, Identify, Manage, and Care.

Better Care Fund 2025-26 Quarter One Report and Explainer

The Health and Wellbeing Board were scheduled to discuss the Better Care Fund (BCF) programme and the 2025-26 quarter one report for Shropshire.

The BCF programme supports local systems to deliver the integration of health, housing and social care in a way that supports person-centred care, sustainability and better outcomes for people and carers. It requires systems to enter a pooled budget arrangement and agree an integrated spending plan. The BCF national overarching objectives for 2025-26 are:

• Reform to support the shift from sickness to prevention.
  • Support complex health and care needs.
  • Use of home adaptations and technology.
  • Support unpaid carers.
• Reform to support people living independently and the shift from hospital to home.
  • Prevent avoidable admissions.
  • Timely and effective discharge.
  • Reduction in use of long-term care.

The value of the pooled budget in Shropshire is £50 million, made up of contributions from the NHS, the local authority, and a disabled facilities grant.

For 2025-26 there are three headline metrics:

• Emergency admissions (emergency admissions to hospital for people aged over 65 per 100,000 population).
• Discharge delay (average length of discharge delay for all acute adult patients).
• Residential admissions (long term admissions to residential care homes and nursing homes for people aged 65 and over per 100,000 population).

Draft Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment 2025

The Health and Wellbeing Board were scheduled to discuss the Draft Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) 2025. The production and publication of a PNA is a statutory requirement, and should highlight the needs for pharmaceutical services in the area, current provision of services, identify gaps and unmet needs and make recommendations on future developments that are required. The PNA is used by organisations including Integrated Care Boards (ICB) and the Local Authority (LA) to plan and commission future services.

Key demographic messages for Shropshire:

• Shropshire is a diverse, large, predominately rural inland county with a wide range of land use, economic activities, employment and social conditions.
• Shropshire's population was increasing more slowly than England between 2000 and 2020 but increase more sharply between 2020 and 2022, due to migration.
• Shropshire has a relatively high concentration of people in the older age groups. In 2023, 54.2% of the County's residents were aged 45 or over, 26.2% were aged 65 and above, and 3.6% were aged 85 and above, when compared to England this was 44%, 18.7% and 2.5% respectively.
• Shropshire, like many parts of the country, has an ageing population, with the median population age now 48.5 compared to 40.5 in England.
• Lower-Level Super Output areas in Harlescott, Monkmoor and Ludlow East wards are the three LSOAs with the highest deprivation levels within Shropshire. All three fall within the top 10% of most deprived LSOA areas within England. Looking at whole wards, the three most deprived wards within Shropshire are Monkmoor, Harlescott and Castlefields & Ditherington.
• 42.6% of Shropshire's population is classified as being 'Urban' and 57.4% as 'rural and has an overall population density of just over 101 persons per square kilometre, compared to 433 in England. Population density is particularly sparse in the South West of the county (39 persons per square kilometre).

Director of Public Health Annual Report 2024-25

The Health and Wellbeing Board were scheduled to discuss the Director of Public Health Shropshire, Annual Report 2024/2025. According to the report, Directors of Public Health have a statutory duty to write an annual report on the health of their population and the Local Authority has a requirement to publish it. The Director of Public Health Annual Report is an evidence-based vehicle for informing local people about the health of their community, as well as providing necessary information for decision makers in local health services, authorities and communities on health gaps and priorities that need to be addressed

The report is structured into sections that describe the health and wellbeing patterns across Shropshire, the reasons for shorter life expectancy in different stages of life, and the role of communities/neighbourhoods in improving health.

The report includes several key recommendations aimed at improving health and wellbeing in Shropshire:

• Renewing the commitment to local place plan/neighbourhood-based working to improve health and wellbeing.
• Recognizing the essential role communities play in delivering improved outcomes and shifting investment into services that support communities, including the voluntary and community sector.
• Assessing and aligning with the government's neighbourhood guidance and the current development within Shropshire around community hubs and JSNA intelligence to align future services and directives.
• Improving the evidence base to understand and monitor rural outcomes, engaging with communities in developing and delivering community-led action plans.
• Continuing to work together as one community of partners to serve Shropshire residents, enabling communities and the voluntary sector to take a central role in service development.

ShIPP Update

The Health and Wellbeing Board were scheduled to receive an update on the Shropshire Integrated Place Partnership (ShIPP). The purpose of ShIPP is Shropshire's Place Partnership Committee, a partnership with shared collaborative leadership and responsibility, enabled by ICS governance and decision-making processes. Clinical/care leadership is central to the partnership, to ensure that services provide the best quality evidence-based care and support for our people, improving outcomes and reducing health inequalities.

The new governance of the ICB has named ShIPP as a formal subcommittee of the ICB Board.