To receive and answer any questions from members of the public.

The Chairman explained to the Board that a question had been received via social media which read:

‘I would be interested to know what is being done to monitor and address health impacts of Heathrow flight noise on residents.’

Nick Davies, Service Lead Adult Commissioning responded to the question with the following statement:

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has long had an interest in the developments at Heathrow Airport and have had an Aviation Forum since 2008. The Forum is committed to providing community leadership to local communities within the Royal Borough by representing local views at national and regional government on the economic, social and environmental impacts (including noise), and concerns arising from activities associated with aviation, particularly those related to Heathrow Airport.

At the last Aviation Forum on 1 November 2016, the decision by the RBWM Cabinet Prioritisation Sub-Committee on 13 October 2016 was discussed; namely to authorise the potential expenditure of £50,000, if required, to legally challenge any potential decision to expand London Heathrow Airport.

The preference expressed by government on 25 October 2016 towards Heathrow, is required to go through an NPS/consultation in 2017 before a final decision is confirmed. It remains the hope of the Council that such a decision will not happen – in order to safeguard against the significant environmental impacts such expansion would have upon Royal Borough residents, including the significant noise detriment that extra air traffic movements would bring.

It is important to note that the four Borough’s considering legal action (in the event of an NPS/decision), will not have arrived at the decision making stage suddenly. A detailed dialogue has been (and will continue to be) undertaken with Government and previously with the Airports Commission over the last few years. It was hoped that the judicial review process will not have been necessary owing to the fact that expansion of the airport cannot satisfy environmental, health and other legal challenges. The Royal Borough continues to believe that Heathrow can get better without getting bigger and that there is only one viable choice in front of the government at present, which was the expansion of Gatwick airport.

The next steps for the Royal Borough will be to scrutinise the detail behind the reported evidence base (involving a further review of environmental assessments), ensuring we continue to hold government to account to protect our residents.

The Royal Borough owns two aviation monitors located in Windsor and Old Windsor to keep a log of noise from both runways. These are in addition to noise monitors sited by the airport at various locations in local communities. The results of these are often discussed with the airport at their Community Noise Forum.

All of the latest information on the Aviation Forum is on the RBWM website, with regular updates on the developments with Heathrow communicated to residents through a variety of news releases.

Other questions asked came from the public gallery of the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting. The following questions were asked with the following responses:

Ø  Who will be carrying out the new development at the St Mark’s site? – The estate was handed over to NHS Property Services and within the last few months, the development had been re-energised. A group was launched six weeks previously which discussed how to make the best use of the site and to see what was actually needed. The Managing Director confirmed the Borough and the CCG’s would be very careful to ensure that people were constantly informed on what was happening with the site. Dr Hayter stated there would be lots of organisations working in the background but, services would be delivered to residents in a streamlined way. He wanted to make sure services were connected and simple.

Ø  Was there a specific place where the public could access and see what Sequins had been decided on? – Dr Hayter confirmed that Sequins would be published on the CCG website after Christmas 2016.

Ø  With STP and the CCG’s, where did the voluntary sector fit in? - the Managing Director confirmed that all services across a wide spectrum would include some voluntary sector input. STP and the CCG’s were really going to start to capitalise on volunteer’s expertise. Dr Hayter stated the CCG had contracted out to organisations and had discussion at the AGM on how to commission services across the voluntary sector and be more joined up. They needed to look at how voluntary organisations could partner up with other community providers to help deliver a range of services.

Ø  Would integrated hubs mean less GPs? – Dr Hayter responded that no, the hubs were there to help GPs deliver better services. To help deliver things on a bigger scale such as group consultations where GP’s, nurses and dieticians can all work together. Details were still to be worked out but, not to take services away from GP’s but to add to them. They would also improve access to care for patients making consultations with GP’s longer.

Ø  A lot of older people and other residents were seeing change and there was a lot of change taking place. Residents were seeing the changes as a loss. How will the Borough get across to residents that the changes were not bad or negative and that it was urgent changes that were needed? Dr Hayter stated that the CCG’s did work with patient groups that underpinned the message that the changes were positive and necessary. His patient group had been discussing the changes and had moved to telephone consultations on Mondays. The patient group had made patients aware of the changes before carrying them out. It was necessary to get patient groups to communicate those messages effectively to residents. Dr Tong commented that despite all of the different things, he asked people if there was another better way of doing things instead of it being the professionals always telling the patients.