Waltham Forest Council is intensifying its focus on health equity through its response to the Marmot Review, prioritising initiatives aimed at reducing disparities in employment, housing, and access to green spaces.
The Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee met on Thursday, 10 July 2025, to discuss the first year of the council's response to the 2022 report, 'A Fairer and Healthier Waltham Forest: Equity and the Social Determinants in Waltham Forest'. The council's response, 'Building a Fairer and Healthier Waltham Forest: Our response to the Marmot recommendations', was finalised in January 2024 and published in March 2024.
To measure the success of the Marmot Accelerators, a set of indicators has been developed to track progress and evaluate outcomes for Waltham Forest residents. Details of these indicators can be found in the appendix of the Public reports pack.
The council's strategy centres on three priority areas:
- Good Work, Better Health
- Healthier Homes
- Greener and Healthier Places
Each priority area has two Marmot Accelerators identified, targeting specific communities and issues. The findings of the Marmot research and cross-council work to develop the response helped catalyse a strategic shift within the council towards a focus on prevention.
Good Work, Better Health
Significant progress has been made in providing targeted coaching, training, and in-work support to adults with long term conditions and disabilities. Individual Placement and Support schemes in primary care and substance misuse services supported 76 people with long term health conditions into employment during 2024/25.
Waltham Forest became the first council in London to sign the National Disability Employment Charter and has started a programme of work to make the council a more inclusive employer of those with disabilities.
Ongoing work is providing language, learning and employment opportunities to South Asian women, addressing the key barrier of language capacity and capability. A council-wide Inclusion Action Plan has been launched, including specific actions to make Waltham Forest a 'radically fairer' place to work. Work is underway to support businesses to become accredited as London Living Wage (LLW) employers, which will benefit South Asian women already in the workforce. The number of Living Wage employers in WF increased from 56 to 66 in 2024-25.
Healthier Homes
All the actions committed to in the Marmot response have been included in the new Private Rented Sector (PRS) strategy approved by Cabinet in November. Over 171 residents at risk of losing their homes due to issues with their tenancies have received support from the pilot housing sustainment team, including with negotiations around repairs and income maximisation.
HEET (a local charity) were commissioned to deliver community outreach and home visits and have supported 100 residents in making an application to retrofitting or energy support offers. A specialist damp and mould team was established, focusing on completing urgent inspections in council-owned and managed homes. It has now been integrated into a general repairs taskforce. The Supported Housing Strategy is in development it will help deliver new homes targeted at older people and other key groups, working with them to co-design, implement and pilot approaches to inform future developments.
Greener and Healthier Places
A cross-council Green Spaces working group has been established to deliver a mission-based approach to Green Spaces work across the council. The SANGS (Suitable Alternative Natural Green Spaces) implementation process has led to enhancements of key local green spaces and includes procurement of a new service for measuring access to green spaces. A programme of greening housing estates, in collaboration with residents and the voluntary sector, has begun, with improvements made to the Grange.
A food innovation fund has been launched, and a total of 7 projects have been funded, including projects focussing on food co-operatives, meal distribution services, improving youth employment and community resilience, and providing education on food growing, cooking and meal planning. The Waltham Forest Food Partnership launched in October 2024, initially connecting council teams, food growers and food resilience projects to share knowledge and explore collective responses to food insecurity challenges, with a preventative ethos embedded into the partnership structure. A new more sustainable model of emergency food distribution, with food banks receiving food directly from the Felix Project, rather than via a council-run food hub has been implemented for 2025-26. This new model aims to improve efficiency and impact compared to the previous council-run food hub.
The Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) screener template determined that there was no impact on the council's equality duty.
