Sexual health services are at “a tipping point” with clinics unable to keep up with demand for tests and treatment, local council leaders have warned.
Central government cuts to local authorities’ public health budgets have left sexual health services struggling to cope with a 25% rise in patients seeking help over the last five years, the Local Government Association claims.
People with sexually transmitted infections face longer waits to see a specialist, and efforts to tackle outbreaks of STIs could be hit, the cross-party body says.
Whitehall-ordered cuts of £531m to public health budgets – almost a tenth of the total – “has left local authorities struggling to keep up with increased demand for sexual health services”.
The number of people attending sexual health clinics in England grew from 1.94 million in 2012 to 2.46 million last year, a rise of 25%. But the government clawed back £200m of the money it was due to give councils in 2015-16 for public health schemes and is cutting another £331m by 2020-21.
Councillor Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the LGA’s community wellbeing board, said: “We are concerned that this will see waiting times start to increase and patient experience deteriorate.
“The reduction in public health funding could also compound problems further and impact on councils’ ability to meet demand and respond to unforeseen outbreaks. We cannot tackle this by stretching services even thinner.”
Councils are being forced to cut funding for sexual health despite the growing number of people being infected with syphilis and gonorrhoea. There were 5,920 cases of syphilis in England last year, 12% more than in 2015 and the highest number recorded since 1949. However, the 420,000 diagnoses of an STI during 2016 were 4% fewer than the year before.
Health groups responded with alarm and said delays in treatment could lead to the wider spread of STIs.
Helen Donovan, the Royal College of Nursing’s professional lead for nursing, said: “Delayed appointments risk further transmission, potentially turning individual cases into a much wider public health issue.
“These worrying figures whow how the government is undermining decades of progress in sexual health.”
The Royal Society for Public Health claimed that sexual health services were already “at breaking point” after £64m of “relentless and quite brutal” cuts over the past four years.
Duncan Stephenson, its director of external affairs, said: “With continued increases in rates of STIs such as syphilis, the recent decision not to extend the HPV vaccination to boys and the future threats posed by issues such as drug resistant gonorrhoea, the government is rolling the dice with the public’s sexual health.”
The Department of Health’s own research shows that every £1 spent on sexual health services, including contraception, saves the public purse £11 in the long-term as a result of fewer unintended pregancies, for example. “The short-sightedness of leaving these services without adequate funding for their rising demand is the falsest of false economies,” added Stephenson.
Councils in England have been responsible for commissioning most sexual health services since the coalition’s shake-up of the NHS took effect in 2013. Recent research by the King’s Fund health thinktank found that councils are spending £30m less this year than last year on contraception and STI services.
Public health experts argue that cutting budgets in that area contradicts the health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s admission that tackling key public health challenges helps to narrow health inequalities.
The Department of Health said: “Sexual transmitted infections, including HIV, are continuing to fall and over the current spending period we will invest more than £16bn in local government public health services. In addition, as part of the wider national HIV prevention programme, NHS England and Public Health England will be launching a major pioneering trial soon, providing PrEP to more than 10,000 people.”
