Questions from the public

As part of all Health and Wellbeing Board (HWBB) business meetings, that will be held in public, there will be fifteen minutes allocated for questions from the public/ public questions at the start of the meeting.

Members of the public need to submit their question(s) in advance of a meeting and will receive a response to it/ them at the meeting.

Should members of the public want to submit a question(s) in advance of a meeting, they need to submit their question(s) 12 days in advance of the scheduled meeting of HWBB.

To submit a question(s), they need to:

• Go down to the ‘Downloadable’ documents section at the bottom of this page
• Download the document in this section is entitled ‘Health and Wellbeing Board – Public questions form’, click on this and you will be able to download a copy of the form
• Complete this form and then email it to: [email protected], for submission

How the process works

Any question(s) submitted must relate to the health and wellbeing function carried out by the HWBB. Any question(s) that is not within HWBBs remit will not be submitted for an answer, and the person submitting the question(s) will be notified by Public Health.

Each member of the public can ask two questions per meeting, and any questions raising matters that have been substantially responded to in the last six months at a scheduled HWBB meeting or other public meeting will be rejected, and the person submitting the question(s) shall be notified by Public Health.

Questions from the public need to be submitted 12 days prior to a scheduled HWBB meeting. Any question(s) received after this deadline will only be submitted to the Board at the discretion of the Chair if they raise matters that are considered urgent, otherwise the question(s) will be held over for the following scheduled meeting of HWBB.

Your form with your question(s) will be received by the Public Health Secretaries, one of who will immediately bring any such question(s) received to the attention of the Director of Public Health, the Deputy Directors of Public Health and the HWBB PH Support Officer. One of these Public Health officers will firstly confirm that the received question(s) are relevant/ appropriate for HWBB and then secondly arrange for an answer to be gathered in response (if the received question(s) are not deemed to be relevant/ appropriate for HWBB, one of the Public Health officers will contact the person who submitted the question(s) and advise them on who/ how they can progress it).

Any question(s) received and confirmed will appear in the ‘questions from the public/ public questions’ item of the scheduled HWBB meeting’s agenda.

All scheduled HWBB meetings are open to the public, the person who has submitted a question(s) can attend to either read out their question(s) and hear their question read out and the response related to their question(s) (either the Chair or Director of Public Health or their representative will read the question(s) out and they will read out the response). If the person who submitted the question(s) cannot attend the scheduled HWWB meeting, a written response will be sent by Public Health to them, after having been responded to in public at the meeting.