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19-21 Broad Street | St Helier Jersey | JE2 4WE
Deputy R. Ward Chair, HSS Panel BY EMAIL
21 November 2023
Dear Chair,
Additional Queries Re: Maintaining Public Health and Health Protection Function
Please see below following your additional queries regarding the Public Health and Health Protection functions. I trust that the detail provided answers your queries.
The 2024 Government Plan business case proposed to replace funds previously made available via the Jersey Care Model (JCM), Building a Safer Society (BASS) and COVID-19 pandemic funding, to ensure continuity of the essential aspects of public health services and activity developed since 2020.
Between 2019 and 2023, various reports including Strengthening Public Health and Public Health Law (2019), the C&AG review into the Government response to the Covid-19 Pandemic (2021), the Jersey Independent Covid-19 Review (2022), and Public Health Protection Review (2023) all evidenced the need for a strengthened public health service, including the development of a health protection function.
There is no underlying growth in Public Health FTE proposed for 2024. Within the Public Health department currently there are 51.5 FTE posts (including some vacancies), these posts are funded through core Public Health funds, departmental transfers from HCS, Jersey Care Model (JCM), Building a Safer Society (BASS), and COVID-19 pandemic funding. The 2024 Government Plan is proposing that the JCM, BASS and Covid funds are replaced with ongoing core public health funding to maintain the Public Health functions that have developed between 2020-2023.
The proposed 2024 FTE as described in the Annex of the Government Plan 2024-2027 is 61. This is comprised of:
• 32 FTE for the core public health team[1];
• 11 FTE for reducing preventable diseases;
• 5 FTE for the Child Health team[2];
• 3.5 FTE for the Health Promotion team[3]; and
• 9.5 FTE to support existing major incident recovery posts.[4]
As detailed in the 2024 Government Plan, the Public Health proposed budget is £7,374,000 for 
2024, this comprises:
1) £3,768,000 existing as previously funded:
• £1,026,000 core public health budget.
• £1,380,000 reducing preventable diseases budget.
• £1,056,000 for childhood immunisations (previously in HCS)
• £306,000 for health promotion (previously in HCS)
2) £2,273,000 as expenditure growth (GP24-004) covers functions previously funded by the JCM, BASS and Covid budgets, which have enabled the development of public health delivery programmes and a Health Protection Function.
3) £899,000 as expenditure growth (GP24-005) is to support the major incidents recovery programme. The programme is administered by Public Health, but the funding will be used cross-government, to establish a Major Incident Support Team (MIST) and to deliver psychological support, health checks and long-term health and wellbeing monitoring in response to the ongoing health and wellbeing needs of islanders impacted by major incidents.
4) £434,000 (£400,000 for GP24-007 and £34,000 service transfer) for elements of vaccination infrastructure costs such as IT.
Figures for Government Plan 2023, lodged in October 2022, were subject to the information and assumptions for the year ahead available at the time. As needs changed throughout the year, FTE figures were also subject to change.
Yours sincerely,
Deputy Karen Wilson
Minister for Health and Social Services D +44 (0)1534 440540