In June 2015, the UK government announced a ￡200m cut to public health funding for local authorities - a 6.2% cut to their budgets that was supposedly based on projected underspend. The announcement was particularly worrying as the public health budgets of local authorities are only ring-fenced until October 2016, and the government plans a 40% real-terms cut to councils' core funding over the life of this parliament. When the ring-fencing ends in 2016, it is not difficult to envisage that cash-strapped local councils will be tempted to raid the public health budget in order to bolster the ever-increasing demand for social care funding.
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