Pharmacists should feel confident in challenging local authorities on how they spend their health budgets, a pharmacist and local politician has said, in response to research that suggests they are not basing health decisions on evidence.

More than half of health professionals working at local authorities feel health budgets are not ring-fenced, according to a report by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) published on Monday (February 3). A similar proportion were concerned that health decisions were based on political reasoning rather than purely on evidence.

Contractor and West Berkshire councillor Graham Jones said pharmacists should use their influence in their communities to speak out if they believed local politicians were spending their health budgets incorrectly.

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	"If you've got evidence that money has been spent inappropriately and pharmacists think it should have been spent differently, say so. I think we can have much greater input into that agenda if we fight our corner," said Mr Jones, who is also chair of Thames Valley LPN.

Mr Jones was concerned that the "massive squeeze" on local authority budgets meant health and wellbeing boards were under pressure in terms of how to allocate their funding, he told C+D.

But local politicians were accountable to the public and pharmacists were in a "powerful position" to influence political decisions if they acted in a unified way, he said.

A fifth of 261 public health professionals surveyed by RSPH last year said local authorities had trouble accessing evidence to argue for investing in local health. And more than half were unconvinced that moving public health responsibilities over to local authorities in April last year had helped reduce health inequalities.

Ealing, Hammersmith & Hounslow LPC chairman Hiten Patel said local politicians needed to visit pharmacies to understand why they should be funded to deliver public health services.

"Ultimately the patients are suffering, because they're not being exposed to the additional services that [pharmacies] have. There is a lack of understanding, which I'm sure can be cured," he told C+D.

Last month, Public Health England national director of health and wellbeing Kevin Fenton told pharmacists his organisation would put its "money where its mouth is" to promote community pharmacy's role to local commissioners.