Case studies

Harrogate Borough Council has set up a community health and wellbeing company, Brimhams Active, to run its gyms, leisure centres and community hubs. 

How councils can lead by example with healthy catering and vending

Essex County Council and their partners, including HCRG and Active Essex, aim to focus on the overall system within the county and aspire to build evidence-based, targeted, and collective approaches that promote healthy weight, rather than developing programmes in isolation.

The ‘Talk Community’ approach sees Herefordshire Council working in partnership with communities, businesses and residents to offer wellbeing advice, support and signposting to services.

Hertfordshire’s whole systems approach to child obesity includes a successful weight management service, an active school travel plan that discourages car drop-offs, and 10 “healthy hubs”.

A network of healthy hubs has been set up across Hertfordshire on high streets, in leisure centres, at food banks and in community halls to take health and wellbeing services out to the public.

Hertfordshire County Council has successfully targeted a number of the marginalised groups included on the government’s at-risk list. Outreach work with the local traveller community was particularly successful with the public health team working with key influencers in the community to engage people through social media.

Hertfordshire County Council has set up a public health funding pot to help district councils get projects off the ground. Over the past five years over £2 million has been transferred, creating a wide-range of schemes aimed at improving the health of residents. This case study shows how district councils have improved the health of their local areas.

Hull’s new approach to child obesity rests on the premise that unhealthy weight is not just a public health problem but cuts across all the council’s areas of responsibility.

Huntingdonshire District Council has worked with its local academic health science network to encourage cancer and cardiac rehab patients to become active and involved in the self-management of their recovery. Patients are being taught how to use remote monitoring technology, while taking part in exercise classes. This forms part of our resource on self care.