South Gloucestershire Council is committed to working with its communities and partners to tackle inequalities in all areas of life. In 2024 the council published a four-year tackling inequalities plan, which sets out a whole-council strategic approach to tackling inequalities in 10 areas of life – including health and wellbeing.
Background and objectives
South Gloucestershire is a largely rural area, but most of its residents live within the fringes of Bristol. Since 2011, the overall population has increased by more than 10 per cent – higher growth than all neighbouring authorities.
Over the same period, the number of over-65s has increased by more than 20 per cent while the number of people aged 15-19 has decreased by 8 per cent. The impact of this demographic change is already being felt by services.
Ethnic diversity has also increased in South Gloucestershire – in the ten years to 2021, the number of people who identify as being from a minority ethnic background rose from 5 per cent to 8.8 per cent.
Following engagement work with communities and stakeholders, South Gloucestershire launched a new Council Plan in 2024, setting out how it will manage services for this growing, ageing and increasingly diverse population. This includes working with residents, community groups, town and parish councils and delivery partners to meet key objectives.
‘Tackling inequalities’ is one of the Council Plan’s five core goals. Data shows that there are significant and, in some cases, widening inequalities between people living in the district’s most and least deprived areas, as well as among protected characteristic and vulnerable community groups.
Lynn Gibbons, Consultant in Public Health at South Gloucestershire Council, said national-level discussions around inequality often focus on deprivation in urban areas – but the picture is far more nuanced than that. “Inequalities exist in all communities, and they exist across communities. Places like South Gloucestershire often get overlooked, or assumptions are made about our communities, which isn’t really fair to them.”
Tackling inequalities
With ‘tackling inequalities’ a core goal in the Council Plan, a team led by the corporate equalities team, supported by public health, worked with residents, stakeholders, councillors and officers to develop a specific ‘Tackling Inequalities Plan’. Focused on ten areas of life which data and resident insights had identified as having inequalities and disparities in outcomes, it provides a framework for a proactive action-based approach to addressing these issues.
Residents were asked to vote on which of the 10 priority areas were most important. As a result, three were selected to have an enhanced partnership focus, with wider partnership input and a directed system approach:
- health and wellbeing
- educational attainment and experience
- poverty and financial hardship.
The approach outlined in the plan includes three stages:
1. Proactively identify issues, gaps and disparities.
2. Identify and deliver actions that respond to them.
3. Measure the impact of these actions (the extent to which the issues, gaps and disparities are being reduced).
Sarah Weld, Director of Public Health and Wellbeing, said the link between the Council Plan and the Inequalities Plan was important. “Together, they are helping to embed the idea that inequalities are everyone’s business – right across the council and beyond. As an example, every service area is now considering how their work has an impact on people’s health and wellbeing.”
From a public health point of view, this cross-council buy-in is invaluable. “South Gloucestershire has one of the lowest public health grants in the country, so in terms of maximising impact we, as a small public health team, can’t do it all ourselves.”
Objectives
For each of the Tackling Inequalities Plan ten priority areas there is a set of key objectives. Every service director in the council was involved in developing these objectives – they reflect issues where the council wants to make a difference and has a key role to play, either alone or in partnership.
The key health and wellbeing objectives include:
- Developing a new delivery model for NHS Health Checks to increase uptake in priority groups.
- Ensuring that all public health commissioned services have identified inequalities relevant to that service and are actively reducing them.
- Improving access to ‘stop smoking’ support among priority populations.
- Ensuring that the NHS community-based healthy weight service is targeted and accessed by those population groups most in need of support.
Progress is being captured in a new inequalities dashboard, which will measure action (is that being/has it been delivered) and impact (has it led to a reduction in inequalities and disparities). As well as charting progress, the dashboard will show how actions and issues inter-relate, enabling a whole-system approach which involves partners such as the NHS and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.
Lessons learned
Commitment from the top, from both managers and politicians, has been critical. The chief executive and strategic leadership team form the governance group for the Tackling Inequalities Plan. Every service director in the council has direct links to some of the actions, so there is a real line of accountability.
Among the champions for this work was Councillor Alison Evans, Cabinet Member for cost of living, equalities and public health. She said the plan represented a significant step forward, providing an evidence-based framework with specific and measurable objectives. “Through this plan we are laying a foundation for continuously and persistently meeting the challenges head-on, so that we are truly effective in delivering ‘on the ground’ for the benefit of all our communities.”
Mark Pullin, Community Development Service Director, said the cabinet members did not want to create targets that were too easy to reach. “They challenged us to be aspirational. They are very much aware of the journey between ‘actions’ and ‘outcomes’, knowing that some of these targets will be difficult to meet, and they are quite comfortable with that. That can sometimes be a challenge from a political perspective.”
Sarah Weld said: “Health inequalities is the council’s business, but it’s also embedded in our integrated care system [ICS] strategy, and there is an outcomes framework that supports that strategy. Through this work we have tried to align the Council Plan, the Tackling Inequalities Plan and the ICS strategy so that we all have similar outcomes.”
Further information
Contact
For more information contact Lynn Gibbons, Consultant in public health: [email protected]