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Cllr Izzi Seccombe, LGA Community Wellbeing spokesperson, responds to the Mental Health Taskforce report.

"The mental wellbeing of our local communities is fundamental to a healthy and prosperous society, and councils provide services that support this, for example through housing, public health such as smoking cessation services, the provision of green spaces, and the design of urban spaces. Councils also provide and commission mental health services for children, young people and adults, alongside the NHS, as well as the all-round social care that is often needed.

"As members of the Mental Health Taskforce, the report rightly recognises the importance of local government in the promotion and prevention agenda, as well as the key role housing plays in supporting those experiencing mental illness. We hope it will provide the platform for greater collaboration between NHS-led mental health services and council-led social care and mental health services.

"We are pleased to see NHS England committing to investing more than a billion pounds a year in NHS mental health services by 2020/21. While recent measures announced for social care will go some way to addressing the problems facing adult social care funding, concerns remain that future years will still be extremely challenging, particularly the next two. That is why the LGA continues to call for £700 million of the funding earmarked for social care through the Better Care Fund by the end of the decade to be brought forward now."

View report: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Mental-Health-Taskforce-FYFV-final.pdf