Autumn Budget 2025 – key takeaways for Environmental Health

Environmental health has been at the heart of several Government announcements this week. There’s much to welcome, but also cause for concern.

Monday saw the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill return to the House of Commons. CIEH welcomed a new Government amendment which will require combined authorities to take environmental factors such as air pollution into account when devising strategies to reduce health inequalities. At a time of considerable change in local authority structures, this is useful clarification, and we’ll be continuing to monitor the progress of the Bill and argue for a key role for environmental health measures.

Wednesday’s Budget saw the lifting of the two-child benefit cap, a measure that will improve the wider determinants of health for hundreds of thousands of children and their families. Over time, we would expect these families’ life chances to improve and for their demand for public services like the NHS to fall.

There will be extra funding for tackling illegal activities on the high street, and we look forward to an expansion of this work.

Also announced in the Budget was the news that the FSA will take forward work to develop national level regulation (NLR) for large food businesses, including supermarkets. This might open up the opportunity to drive forward long-held aspirations. We know that many of our members across the three countries have grave reservations about the potential effects of NLR on food safety and we are engaged with the FSA to ensure that these are taken into account so that risks within the system are clearly identified.

The Government utilised Budget Day to announce a new national licensing policy framework for the hospitality and leisure sectors. This feels as though it has been rushed through. We all want a thriving and vibrant hospitality sector, but we have serious concerns about these new measures and will be discussing their implications with our members and with partner organisations in public health.