The Government has rejected a request from Hertfordshire County Council for additional public health funding, councillors have been told.
The authority wrote to ministers following concerns about the level of the public health grant and pressures facing local services.
However, executive member for public health and community safety, Cllr Ajanta Hilton, told members of the impact of scrutiny advisory committee that no further funding had been offered.
“We did receive a response expressing that there was no offer of additional funds, so we just have to manage as we can,” she said.
“If the scrutiny board feel we should write again, that’s something that we can do.
“But I’m sad to say that they didn’t offer any additional funds and we’re making strong progress in terms of making sure that we’re adapting to financial pressures, making sure that we’re assessing all the commissioning arrangements and making sure that we’re not leaving residents short.”
The update came as councillors reviewed recommendations arising from a previous budget scrutiny exercise.
Director of public health Sarah Perman said the council had highlighted rising demand and financial pressures when making representations to government.
She said: “The response was received, which noted the representations we’d made but offered no additional financial support.”
Despite the funding decision, she said the council had been able to continue operating with its allocation.
“There haven’t been any reductions in services,” Ms Perman told the committee.
“There’s been no cuts to our services, and we have been able to continue with the planned additional financial investment for the prevention investment programme.”
Ms Perman added that the Department of Health and Social Care was currently gathering information from councils about staffing costs and NHS Agenda for Change pay pressures.
She said this could potentially result in some additional in-year funding.
The public health grant supports a range of services including smoking cessation, substance misuse programmes and other preventative health initiatives.
Councillors agreed that the recommendation, which called for representations to Government regarding funding pressures, had been completed.
The committee signed off the recommendation.
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