Agenda and draft minutes

To receive and note apologies for absence.

The board received apologies from the York Place Director, Humber and North Yorkshire Health Care Partnership, who was substituted by the Executive Director of Communications, Marketing and Media Relations.

The board received apologies from the Corporate Director of Children’s and Education, City of York Council, who was substituted by the Director of Children’s Safeguarding.

The board received apologies from the Director of Housing and Communities, City of York Council; there was no substitute.

The board received apologies from the Interim Managing Director, North Yorkshire and York, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, who was substituted by the Director of Operations and Transformation.

The board received apologies from the Chief Executive, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who was substituted by the Director of Communications

The board received apologies from the Area Manager Director of Community Risk and Resilience, North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, who was substituted by the Head of Early Intervention and Prevention.

The board received apologies from the Chief Superintendent, North Yorkshire Police; there was no substitute. 

The board received apologies from the Chief Executive, York CVS; there was no substitute.

The Director of Public Health advised that he was running late and arrived at 4:33pm.

At this point in the meeting, Members and co-opted members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary interest, or other registerable interest, they might have in respect of business on this agenda, if they have not already done so in advance on the Register of Interests. The disclosure must include the nature of the interest.

An interest must also be disclosed in the meeting when it becomes apparent to the member during the meeting.

[Please see attached sheet for further guidance for Members].

Board Members were invited to declare any personal, prejudicial or disclosable pecuniary interests, other than their standing interests, that they had in relation to the business on the agenda. None were declared.

At this point in the meeting members of the public who have registered to speak can do so. Members of the public may speak on agenda items or on matters within the remit of the committee.

Please note that our registration deadlines have changed to 2 working days before the meeting. The deadline for registering at this meeting is at 5.00pm on Monday, 11 May 2026.

 To register to speak please visit www.york.gov.uk/AttendCouncilMeetings to fill out an online registration form. If you have any questions about the registration form or the meeting please contact the Democracy Officer for the meeting whose details can be found at the foot of the agenda.

Webcasting of Public Meetings

Please note that, subject to available resources, this public meeting will be webcast including any registered public speakers who have given their permission. The public meeting can be viewed on demand at www.york.gov.uk/webcasts.

During coronavirus, we've made some changes to how we're running council meetings. See our coronavirus updates (www.york.gov.uk/COVIDDemocracy) for more information on meetings and decisions.

It was reported that there had been no registrations to speak under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme.

To approve and sign the minutes of the last meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board held on Wednesday, 21 January 2026.

Resolved:   To approve and sign the minutes of the last meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board held on Wednesday, 21 January 2026.

This report summarises discussions at a recently held workshop for the Health and Wellbeing Board, facilitated by the Local Government Association (LGA), the purpose of which was to develop the work of the Board and enable it to become more effective.

The report also proposes a series of changes to the way the board operates, emerging from those discussions, to be agreed by members at today’s meeting.

 The report was presented by the Director of Public Health who advised that this item had deliberately been allocated a significant amount of time on the agenda because it was intended to set out how the board would function in future years. He noted that the report built upon a private developmental workshop attended by board members and that this was the first time they had been able to discuss this in public.

He stated that in consultation for the workshop, the Local Government Association (LGA) had advised the board not to lose sight of key objectives, and he therefore intended to break down where the city was against these:

·       Healthy life expectancy had been declining, particularly over the past 5 years (males by 4.4 years, females by 4.9). England as a whole was experiencing a similar trend, but York’s trend was sharper.

·       There was a 10-year life expectancy gap between the wards of Westfield (76.1 males/80.6 females) and Copmanthorpe (87.1 males/91.8 females).

·       Adolescent mental health had also been declining, benchmarking lower than the national average for happiness and with 4,225 children and young people accessing community mental health services, half of whom were required to wait over 12 weeks.

He drew the board’s attention to the wording of its 10-year Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS); that “York will be healthier and this health will be fairer in 2032 than it was in 2022”.

He outlined that the LGA had interviewed Health and Wellbeing Board members in February, and the following conclusions had been reached:

·       Reducing health inequalities remains the perceived central purpose of the York HWBB.

·       York benefits from strong partnership relationships and good will across organisations.

·       The HWBB has the potential to play a stronger strategic leadership role in the system.

·       Lived experience and community voices are vital to shaping effective policy.

·       There is support for reviewing how the board works to maximise its impact.

·       There is an opportunity to consider evolving the HWBB so it becomes a more focused, influential and community connected forum.

He discussed the changes to the model of an effective Health and Wellbeing Board proposed by the LGA, with increased focus on neighbourhoods, partnership, impact and collaboration. He also highlighted areas identified by the workshop as needing to be “stopped”, “started” and “sharpened”.

The resulting proposal was that meetings one and three of the year had been set out as Health and Wellbeing Board Ambition and Engagement Workshops. These would:

·       Be 2.5 hour daytime workshop sessions, not held in public.

·       Not be restricted to members of the board – while board members would be mandatory attendees, other subject matter experts would be invited.

·       Held in other, less formal venues in the community and involve active engagement with residents.

·       Focus on strategic discussion around two or three strategic priorities aligned to the JHWS, which would continue to be the focus of the board until members request a change. These become “obsessions” of the board.

·       End each session with a list of specific actions  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.

This report is for the attention and action of Board members, sharing two reports from Healthwatch York.

These respectively share feedback received about how changes to non-emergency patient transport, following the tightening of eligibility criteria in April 2025, have affected people across York and North Yorkshire and an exploration into whether reports of poor experiences in accessing local healthcare services from some trans, non-binary and intersex (TNBI) people in York, shared with Healthwatch, were common for this community.

Report 1:

The first Healthwatch report was presented by the manager of Healthwatch York, who noted that the work had been completed in partnership with Healthwatch North Yorkshire to better explore the impact of national changes to eligibility for non-emergency patient transport after these changes were implemented locally.

She explained that in addition to members of the public, Healthwatch had heard from local voluntary and community sector partner organisations who had not found out about these changes until implementation, and there was concern why some people previously eligible for transport no longer were.

Healthwatch had shared a survey with residents and with partners, and while they had heard from some people who reported that they consistently would not have been eligible for transport both before and after the changes, and also from people trying to access services for which transport had never been provided, they still believed this information to be useful, since it illustrated both that transport services and criteria were not well understood, and that transport needed to be a key consideration in any future health and care estate planning.

Key themes emerging from the work were:

·       Cost - a significant financial burden in paying for transport meant some people were choosing not to attend appointments were not taking the opportunity to receive health care

·       Time – including the time spent arranging transport, which could be difficult, particularly where specific mobility issues existed. There was also increased time spent traveling when direct transport wasn’t available, and time waiting when appointment times did not align with the timing of available transport.

·       A lack of alternatives – with too few community transport options within the city.

·       An impact on mental and physical well-being – whether through stress, anxiety or the physical demands of managing transport and transport options independently.

·       Inconsistencies in non-emergency patient transport provision – with variations in service availability and understanding of the eligibility from within services and outside.

·       Specific accessibility issues – barriers experienced by people that made travel particularly difficult or unsafe.

·       Eligibility – where in the early days of the scheme, some people were incorrectly advised that they were no longer eligible.

She highlighted several specific case studies from the report to illustrate the challenges, stressing that these issues required joined-up thinking to ensure full access to healthcare for all.

Members highlighted the point regarding people stopping treatment because they can’t get to appointments; suggesting that it was important to focus on the point about transport alternatives when older people were expected to cover a great distance for appointments shortly after their bus passes became valid in the morning, since they would otherwise be obliged to pay a fare in these circumstances.

The Manager, Healthwatch York responded that residents could use their hospital letter concerning an appointment to get on the bus before 9:30am without paying a fare, though she had recently received feedback that a driver had refused to acknowledge a Patient Knows Best letter on their phone for this purpose, so there was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 46.

This report provides an update to the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWBB) regarding the work of the York Health and Care Partnership (YHCP).

The report also asks the Health and Wellbeing Board to respond to a recommendation in relation to Section 10.

The report was presented by the Executive Director of Communications, Marketing and Media Relations, NHS Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership. It sought to confirm the board was content both to lead and provide a Neighbourhood Health Plan, building on the National Neighbourhood Health Framework published in March 2026, which had indicated a shift to more integrated, community-based care and prevention, and Health and Wellbeing Boards becoming the statutory lead and system steward for delivery.

She noted that York had a particularly strong foundation for neighbourhood working, with integrated neighbourhood teams in place across geographies, early progress and nationally recognised frailty and complex care pathways and population health management. There was strong partnership working across the local authority and York was recognised as a leading Place within the ICB for neighbourhood development.

She outlined that key delivery priorities were scaling and embedding the neighbourhood model and further development of the statutory neighbourhood health plan, strengthening joint commissioning and pooled approaches and particularly progress on systemwide mental health offer including the 24/7 mental health hub model and commissioning road map in the coming year.

Outlining risks and challenges she cited the ongoing situation concerning the NHS and the ICB but also system capacity constraints particularly in relation to commissioning and contracting capacity and workforce pressures across partners.She also noted that the whole system experienced significant financial pressure.

Regarding commissioning and governance she noted that joint commissioning continued to progress, supported by the extension of the Section 75 into 26/27 and the joint commissioning plan to be developed in quarter 1. The Better Care Fund had been submitted and she was expecting finalisation of that imminently and the ICB was in the midst of organisational change and was now in the midst of implementing its new structure, having this week conducted interviews for senior roles within the commissioning uh and insight function and programs of care including um you'll remember we're moving to a model of the three I'll call them the the the place delivery um leads um and that the interviews for those roles have taken place this week. There was still a little way to go in terms of implementation of the structure but 60% of the roles had been populated.

The chair thanked the Executive Director of Communications, Marketing and Media Relations and reiterated that a decision from the board was required as to whether it was content to provide the proposed Neighbourhood Health Plan.

Members acknowledged they had little choice in this; since signing off the plan was effectively a responsibility of the board, but felt HWBB was the appropriate place for this. It was noted that several board members were also members of the York Place Board, in the interest of reducing duplication. Ultimately the members agreed support for the proposition, stating that it was important to involve people in neighbourhoods, and active system stewardship in implementation.

Members acknowledged the importance of having primary care around the table and involved in the Neighbourhood Health  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47.