The Haringey Council Health and Wellbeing Board meeting included discussion of the Haringey Neighbourhood Health and Care Update, the Haringey Tobacco Control Strategy, and the Haringey Local Plan Consultation. The board was also scheduled to discuss the minutes from the previous meeting, and future agenda items.

Haringey Local Plan Consultation

The board was scheduled to discuss the draft Haringey Local Plan, which will be used to determine planning applications in Haringey. The council is preparing a new local plan due to changes to national policy and legislation, the adoption of a new London Plan¹, the council's declaration of a climate emergency², a growing focus on health and wellbeing and the revision of the council's strategic aspirations.

The draft local plan consultation ran from October to December 2025. According to the report pack, the consultation sought to determine whether the policies and proposals in the draft local plan were sound and could most effectively address key issues the borough faces such as fairness, health and wellbeing and climate change.

The draft plan focuses on placemaking, which it defines as:

an ongoing process that seeks to: empower our residents and stakeholders to shape places that enable everyone to reach their potential; meet our diverse needs and ambitions to deliver a fairer, healthier, greener Haringey; and enhance and celebrate our unique environments, histories, cultures, communities, and identities.

The plan includes a borough-wide framework for placemaking covering 11 neighbourhoods. It aims for inclusive, sustainable, and equitable growth, with at least 16,000 homes built between 2027 and 2036. Development is prioritised in Wood Green and Tottenham Opportunity Areas, town centres, and other accessible locations. The plan also focuses on the intensification and renewal of employment land, particularly in the east of the borough, diversification of town centres and the protection of the natural and historic environment.

The plan also aims to embed health and wellbeing, with a suite of policies to support healthy places, covering approach to growth, design, sustainable travel, climate adaptation and resilience, green and blue infrastructure and social infrastructure.

Haringey Tobacco Control Strategy

The board was scheduled to discuss the Haringey Tobacco Control Strategy and Action plan (2025 - 2029). The vision of the strategy is to create a smoke free generation and eliminate tobacco related harms in Haringey in 2030.

The strategy aligns with regional and national frameworks, including the Smokefree 2030 ambition, national schemes like Swap to Stop³, incentives for pregnant women, the Haringey Health & Wellbeing Strategy, Integrated Care System (ICS) plans, the Corporate Delivery Plan 2024 –26 and the NHS Long Term Plan smoking commitments.

The strategic objectives of the plan are to reduce smoking prevalence, protect children & young people from smoking/vaping, support smokers to quit smoking, address inequalities due to smoking, tackle illicit tobacco and reduce exposure to second-hand smoke.

According to the report pack, smoking prevalence in Haringey is 13.9%, which is higher than the rates for London and England. Higher smoking prevalence rates were found among routine/manual workers (33%), Romanian (37%), Polish (36%), Turkish (35%) speakers, people with Serious Mental Illness (SMI) (40.6%) and pregnant women (4.8%). The report pack also noted that youth vaping is rising.

The priority populations identified in the strategy are routine/manual workers, ethnic minority groups (Polish, Romanian, Turkish), pregnant women & families, people with SMI or substance misuse, LGBTQ+ communities, the homeless population and residents living in the most deprived areas of the borough.

The strategic commitments of the plan are to prioritise reducing health inequalities, enable young people & families, improve services to support every smoker, tackle illicit tobacco and take wider policy related actions, communicate the harms and the hope and use systematic and data led public health intelligence.

The report pack listed a number of achievements, including the formation of the Haringey Tobacco Control Alliance, the signing of a tobacco control declaration, the assignment of a clinical champion for primary care and participation in the national swap to stop scheme.

Haringey Neighbourhood Health and Care Update

The board was scheduled to receive an update on Haringey Neighbourhood Health and Care.

The report pack described neighbourhoods as footprints on which teams integrate, services work together and local infrastructure and community assets are developed, with an emphasis on prevention, proactivity and local care, underpinned by shared infrastructure, data and insight, technology and workforce reform.

Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INT) build on Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs) and include NHS providers, council teams and the Voluntary and Community Sector Enterprise (VCSE). Patients and residents are considered a key partner.

The report pack stated that there are at least 18 Neighbourhoods in North Central London (NCL) with populations of 60,000 – 130,000. Each neighbourhood is expected to have leadership and management capacity to support caseloads, systems and processes, training & development, accountability, shared infrastructure (IT, co-location where possible but flexi space & networked models where necessary, population health data), wider delivery capacity (including high street services) and strong relationships with local communities and the VSCE.

The Haringey integrator arrangements are a tripartite alliance between Haringey Council, Haringey GP Federation (HGGPF) and Whittington Health. The integrators will jointly align services and teams to neighbourhood footprints, share leadership and operational responsibilities, pool resources (staff, estates, digital, data), embed co-design and community engagement and report monthly to the Neighbourhoods & Inequalities Board, which feeds into the Haringey Borough Partnership Executive.

The report pack noted that communities and individuals want to take more ownership of their health and wellbeing, but they need access to good quality and trusted information to support this. It also stated that increasing health literacy and knowledge of how to access support and what support is available is of great importance to communities in Haringey.