ADPH Autumn Budget Submission 2026

The Government has rightly recognised that the UK’s growth challenge is increasingly a health challenge. Investment in prevention should therefore be core economic policy in order to get more people working, higher productivity, lower welfare spending, and a sustainable NHS.

Our recommendations:

• Health in All Policies (HiAP) and wellbeing approaches that put investment in prevention and public health at the centre should be adopted across the whole of Government.
• Mandatory Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) with a strong equity lens should be introduced to central Government, local government, the NHS, and national arm’s-length bodies across England and Scotland to drive a HiAP approach to policymaking, similar to Wales.
• Government should fund outcomes at a place-level (rather than through departmental silos), and streamline national funding streams (eg Family Hubs, Homelessness Prevention, and Crisis and Resilience Funds) that target the same populations to reduce fragmentation and support effective local delivery. In the interim, Government should provide support for local coordination so that areas can navigate different guidance, integrate funding pots, and provide coherent support to families.
• The NHS should increase the proportion of their overall budgets spent on prevention by 1% a year up to an aspirational target of 10-20%.
• The Government should restore the public health grant to its 2015/16 real-terms per person value.
• Redistribution of the grant is also needed to solve the inequity between LAs, either by applying the 2016 Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA) formula or through new calculations.
• Equivalent investment should be made in public health in the devolved nations to ensure public health teams can deliver across the UK.
• Government should implement a minimum price of 65p per unit of alcohol in England.