Under the Freedom of Information Act please can you provide me with answers to the following:

1. Did you consider continuing with the classes but in a different way?
No. The public health grant can not be used to fund these classes. There are multiple options for exercise classes, for bespoke rehabilitation this would be via the NHS

2. Did you do any consultation with those of us who go to these classes?
No

3. If the classes could not be covered by the Public Health Grant could they not have continued in this form as standalone classes?
Potentially, and this is in the gift of other service providers.

4. Did you consider opening the classes up to participants with heart problems but without a GP referral?
No. The programme is being stopped as it can’t be funded using the public health grant. There are multiple other exercise options for residents including for those preferring low impact cardiac activity.

5. Did you consider working with GPs in the area to encourage them to refer more people?
No

6. Can you provide me with a list of the specific health improvement and prevention responsibilities in the Public Health Grant you refer to?
The public health grant for Wokingham is very small - this year (25/26) was around £6.3m. The allocation of the grant comes with a clear statement as to what we must fund. We spend approximately £1m on staff – this includes programme managers who commission and manage our mandated services such as drugs and alcohol treatment and recovery services, the 0-19 children’s programme (health visitors and school nursing), NHS health checks, sexual health service, our health protection function and our analytical function. Alongside staff we spend approximately £2m on the 0-19 service, and a further £1m on the drugs and alcohol service, just under £1m on the sexual health service, and barely £100,000 on NHS Health checks. Just under £1m goes into allocations to other areas of the Council to support their work to improve population health outcomes. The remaining goes on smaller commissions or programme costs such as health promotion, child death overview panels, population mental health services and suicide prevention, vaccination, etc.

7. What is the cost to the Council to run the cardiac rehab classes (excluding revenue generated by participant fees)?
The service costs mainly relate to staff who deliver the programmes. The budget line for this team is approximately £250,000, although with only five filled posts currently it came to £203,000 in 25/26. This is approximately 20% of the public health staffing budget. In addition, we budget £25,300 for associated programme costs, this was offset by the charges made for the sessions.

8. During normal operational hours how much time (%) usage do the rooms that are being used for classes currently have and what percentage of time weekly are the rooms left empty?
This information would be held by the Leisure Centre.

9. If a group of the current participants were to source a qualified and insured instructor to continue with the classes and we organised it would the Council let us use the rooms free of charge if we could find slots that are not currently used?
This would be a discussion between individuals and the owners of the facility