THE county’s needle exchange and methadone services transfer from the NHS to Herefordshire Council next month.

They are the latest public health functions to pass to the council under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.

Tendering processes for other transferred NHS services are already underway.

This week - in a cabinet level decision - the council accepted the formal transfer of needle exchange and the supervised taking of methadone or other opiate substitutes.

Also accepted was medication support for stop smoking services.

The initial commissioning responsibility for these services transferred from the former Primary Care Trust to the Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in 2013.

Negotiations over the current transfer and covering funding have been ongoing with the CCG.

The total annual value of all three services is around £200,000.

In September last year, a cabinet level decision authorised procurement processes for drugs and alcohol, sexual health, school nursing, health checks and stop smoking services.

Such services have also been reviewed and redesigned to prepare for tendering.

Progress on procurement to date shows:

* Health checks and stop smoking services currently provided by GP’s and pharmacies  - tender evaluations currently in progress and successful bidders identified within the next few weeks.

* Tenders for an integrated drugs and alcohol service to be received by May, allowing for transition arrangements.

* A full tender process for an integrated sexual health service expected this month.

It is already accepted that some existing contracts will need to be extended until the newly integrated service is established.

Work on standardising related information gathering and reporting arrangements comes with the possibility of a cost cutting partnership with the CCG.

Though part of the original procurement programme, the school nursing service has since been the subject of a separate report requesting an extension to March 2016.

That report was approved in January, allowing the service to align with developments to the council’s child centre service and the transfer of the health visitor service from the NHS later this year.