Agenda and minutes

• Councillor Afzal
• Councillor Ethapemi
• Councillor Rajan-Seelan
• Councillor Tazi Smith
• Archdeacon Catherine Pickford
• Mr Alloysius Frederick
• Councillor Gwen Grahl

Members are invited to declare at this stage of the meeting, the nature and existence of any relevant disclosable pecuniary or personal interests in the items on this agenda and to specify the item(s) to which they relate.

Personal interests were declared as follows:

• Councillor Ketan Sheth – Lead Governor of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and governor at a number of educational settings.

To hear any deputations received from members of the public in accordance with Standing Order 67.

There were no deputations received.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as a correct record.

The minutes of the meeting held on 2 July 2025 were approved as an accurate record of the meeting.

There were no matters arising.

The Chair advised that he had agreed to take two urgent items regarding Sickle Cell care in NWL and the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital from Pippa Nightingale (CEO of London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust). As such, he advised that he would take item 11 – Any Other Urgent Business – first.

Notice of items to be raised under this heading must be given in writing to the Head of Executive and Member Services or his representative before the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 60.

In accordance with Standing Order 60, the Chair agreed to take two urgent items regarding Sickle Cell care and the Urgent Care Centre at Central Middlesex Hospital and welcomed Pippa Nightingale to provide those updates.

Sickle Cell Care

Pippa Nightingale began by thanking the Committee for the opportunity to attend the meeting to keep members informed of the rapid changes happening within the NHS and within NWL.

In providing an update on Sickle Cell care, Pippa Nightingale advised that one of the largest Sickle Cell populations in NWL was in Brent, so it was important to get their healthcare needs right, which she felt the NHS had not always done in the past. She emphasised the need for the NHS to hold itself to account on that and recognise that it had not designed services that met the needs of the Sickle Cell population. As such, a large piece of work had been undertaken over the last year between LNWT and Imperial College London, who provided the majority of healthcare for Sickle Cell patients in London, to re-design the pathway in partnership with patients and service users. She highlighted that there was a very active Sickle Cell community in NWL who were very open to telling the NHS their health needs, and so the new pathway had been co-designed with that community. The changes included a new Sickle Cell Acute Hub, located at Hammersmith Hospital, which allowed patients direct access to a Haematology Sickle Cell Specialist instead of needing to go through an A&E department. NHSE funding had been received to set up a 24/7 triage service for that hub and the patient could be seen straight away, which was what Sickle Cell patients had been asking for over the years.

The second part of the workstream on improving the Sickle Cell care pathway was to expand the outpatient service at Central Middlesex Hospital. Patients had been clearly expressing the want for that service to be expanded to be open 7 days a week for longer hours, so the hours of that service had been extended and the NHS was now looking to expand the service to be open 7 days a week. In concluding the update, she thanked clinicians across LNWT and Imperial College London for coming together to make the changes happen.

The Chair thanked Pippa Nightingale for the information and asked how the changes would be communicated to patients and service users. Pippa Nightingale advised that there was a very active Sickle Cell Patient Engagement Group who had co-designed the pathway and helped communicate the changes. They had also attended two very large Sickle Cell engagement events at Hammersmith Hospital to communicate the changes which had been well attended. The changes had been communicated through the Haematologist Specialist Teams who had close access to patients and all Sickle Cell patients had been written to about the changes.

The Committee asked whether there was capacity to manage all patients at the same time at the new hub  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To provide an overview to the Committee on children’s oral health in Brent, including both national and local contexts and available data.

Councillor Neil Nerva (as Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, Public Health and Leisure) introduced the report, which provided an overview of children’s oral health in Brent, including both national and local contexts and available data. The report considered what the local authority and local NHS could do in partnership to improve oral health in Brent, and he thanked the Committee for prioritising this area.

Somebi Anwunah (Principal Public Health Strategist, Brent Council) provided additional information on the report, which he advised covered data, trends and levels of dental decay in the borough as well as the interventions Brent Public Health had put in place which included; an oral health needs assessment; the oral health bus, which had been running since 2021 and had completed over 3,000 dental assessments for children in primary schools; the supervised toothbrushing programme which had been running in Brent since 2017; and the Big Brent Brushathon which was an oral health promotion programme run annually for the past two years. The report also covered the negative factors perpetuating poor oral health outcomes in Brent, such as gaps in knowledge regarding toothbrushing techniques, inadequate access to fluoridisation and poor behaviours around diet. Finally, the report detailed future planning, including a consultation on the programmes currently being delivered and the national expansion of the supervised toothbrushing programme for which Brent had received funding for. Brent Council was also looking at surveying schools to further understand children’s health and oral health needs.

The Chair thanked presenters for their introduction and invited comments and questions from those present, with the following issues raised:

The Committee recognised the importance of oral health for children, and highlighted concerns in the figures showing that 43% of children in Brent had experienced some form of dental decay by the age of 5. They noted that Brent had the highest number of people suffering from dental decay compared to other boroughs and asked why there had been no earlier interventions. Somebi Anwunah responded that, whilst the level of dental decay in Brent was high, it was trending downwards. Up until 2022, dental decay levels had been trending upwards, where the figure showed 46% of children in Brent had experienced dental decay by the age of 5, compared to 43% now. This was in comparison to the London trend, where dental decay levels appeared to be currently trending upwards. As such, whilst Brent had historically high levels of dental decay, he felt that the trend over the last two years showed it was going in the right direction, particularly compared to the rest of London. Dr Melanie Smith (Director of Public Health and Leisure, Brent Council) added that there were deep-seated, entrenched beliefs amongst Brent’s communities in relation to oral health, and Public Health found that parents who had experienced poor oral health in their own childhoods had negative attitudes towards oral health and accessing dentists as they associated it with pain and discomfort. Public Health was proactively addressing this and trying to change that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

To provide an overview of the council’s action to tackle period poverty through the Period Dignity Brent project.

The Chair began by thanking Brent Youth Parliament (BYP) for putting this item forward on the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee Work Programme and shining a spotlight on the issue, before asking Councillor Mili Patel (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources) to introduce the item.

In introducing the report, which provided an overview of the Council’s action to tackle period poverty through the Period Dignity Brent Project, Councillor Mili Patel reminded members that the work around access to menstrual products had begun in 2020, following the work of the Poverty Commission which had emphasised the barriers that women and girls in particular faced regarding inequalities. The Commission had recognised that period poverty and lack of access to essential products was a barrier for people who menstruate to be able to continue in education and employment. She highlighted that, following that work, the Council had relooked at period poverty as a policy, and rebranded the language from ‘poverty’ to ‘dignity’. The policy and project aimed to provide education and awareness of period dignity to break down barriers whilst remaining sensitive to the demographics and cultures in Brent. Through a collaboration with ‘Hey Girls’, free period products were now being provided in Council-owned buildings such as the Family Wellbeing Centres, Hubs, Libraries, New Horizons, Sufra and Brent Food Banks. She added that the report detailed the success of the project and identified the learning made, with the aim to continue to evolve the work.

In continuing the introduction, Tom Pickup (Policy and Performance Manager, Brent Council) highlighted that, whilst the Committee had asked to understand the scale of the issue within Brent, with the information available it was not easy to measure in local areas. The report instead tried to capture the scale of poverty in Brent and supplement that with the level of uptake of the Period Dignity Project. The updated offer aimed to ensure the project provided free period products across Brent sites, tackled stigma and provided education around period dignity and trained staff on the frontline distributing period products so that they understood the issues around period dignity. The new offer had been live since November 2024, and, based on the level of uptake there was a clear need. The next steps would be to continue running the project and embed it as business as usual across the services and sites that were distributing the products.

Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director for Children, Young People and Community Development, Brent Council) concluded the introduction by reiterating thanks to BYP for focusing attention on this topic. He added that the Council had surveyed secondary schools on whether they provided free period products and all of the schools who had responded, which was the majority of Brent secondary schools, had confirmed they were taking part in the programme.

The Chair thanked the presenters for their introductions and invited the Committee to ask questions of the officers, with the following points raised:

The Chair invited BYP to begin the questioning, who  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

To provide an overview of the impact of YJS delivery outlined in the Brent Youth Justice Plan 2025-2028, which is due to be presented at Cabinet in October.

Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director for Children, Young People and Community Development, Brent Council) introduced the report, which provided an overview of the impact of Youth Justice Service (YJS) delivery and its partners in 2024-25. In outlining the report, he highlighted that it felt like a successful story in the challenging environment in Brent. He reminded the Committee that the report did not just cover local authority work, but the local area partnership as a whole, because youth justice, under legislation, was delivered by partners with a multi-agency partnership approach to youth justice in Brent. He introduced Tony Bellis, Superintendent for Safer Neighbourhoods in the North West Borough Command Unit (NW BCU), Met Police, who had attended online as one of the partner agencies supporting youth justice in Brent. Tony Bellis agreed that the report showed a success story, and he was proud of the work of his teams in the Youth Justice Service and the relationship officers had with the local authority and stakeholders.

Nigel Chapman informed the Committee that there was a new His Majesties Inspectorate of Probation Inspection cycle and Brent was expecting an inspection under this new framework imminently. There had only been 6 published inspections under the new framework, two of which were in London. Brent’s previous inspection had been in 2019 when youth justice had been judged as ‘good’, and the Youth Justice Service was currently assessing itself as providing at least a ‘good’ service through quality assurance work.

Serita Kwofie (Head of Early Help, Brent Council) provided further information about the self-assessment judgement of ‘good’, which she explained came from evidence of strengths. The YJS had seen a reduction in reoffending custody rates and first-time entry rates, which were lower than the London average and statistical neighbours. She was proud of Brent’s out of court disposal processes, and Brent had achieved 100% in its decision-making which was strong and in line with guidance. There were some areas to focus on improving, including reducing disproportionality and increasing the voice of victims in youth justice work, which the new inspection framework would review. She felt that the YJS was well placed to achieve that considering what was already offered through the Restorative Justice Programme, and the focus on strengthening that to hear the voice of victims.

The Chair thanked officers for the introduction and invited comments and questions from those present, with the following points raised:

The Committee were of the view that the narrative of the report did not match the figures being presented. Members highlighted that the report stated that custody rates had been falling for the last 10 years, but table 4 in paragraph 6.4 showed that across the last few years the figures had fluctuated and been inconsistent. Similarly, table 3 at paragraph 6.2 showed an upward trend for reoffending since 2022, despite the narrative of the report stating that reoffending had been on a downward trend for a 10-year period. Nigel Chapman advised that the covid period did distort the figures  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.

To present the Committee’s work programme for 2025/26.

The Committee noted the Work Programme.

To present the Scrutiny Recommendations Tracker to the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee.

The Committee noted the recommendations tracker.