Agenda item

Gloucestershire Economic Growth O&S Committee (10/03) – update from Councillor Paul McCloskey (to follow)

Gloucestershire Health O&S Committee (22/03) – verbal update from Councillor Horwood (to follow)

Police and Crime Panel (23/03)   - update from Councillor Jonny Brownsteen (to follow)

An update on the 23/03 meeting of the Police and Crime Panel had been circulated prior to the meeting by email and this was attached at Appendix 2.  Members were asked to contact Councillor Brownsteen directly with any questions or comments.

No further written updates had been received. 

Councillor Horwood was invited to provide a verbal update on the 22/03 meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC).  He started by apologising for not having produced a written briefing on the special meeting of HOSC on the 22 March.  He explained that family member had been taken unwell and had as a consequence been the focus of much of his time over the last weeks.  The decision for the HOSC was whether to take any particular action in relation to the Fit for the Future proposals, these the large scale changes that we had discussed a number of times, including the closure of 24 acute medical beds and the shifting of the acute medical take to Gloucester, the closure of vascular surgery at Cheltenham, the reconfiguration of general surgery, which was still under consideration but would probably result in this and undoubtedly emergency surgery to Gloucester, as well as other services.  Still a major change and in his view probably the most major downgrade in services in Cheltenham that we had seen.  There was a lot of discussion at the special meeting and a lot of criticism about the timing of this and the fact that it had been done during the pandemic.  Not simply because of the difficulties of being able to ensure robust public consultation, but actually because there were a lot of lessons to be learned from the pandemic, which really ought to inform the reconfiguration of services. Despite numerous reassurances given at that meeting, he was still of the view, and this had been supported by data produced by BBC Radio Gloucestershire from a Freedom of Information request about covid related deaths, which showed that there had been quite a lot of unavoidable deaths in Gloucester, from the centralisation of surgery at Gloucester (which was a red site, meaning a covid risk site, rather than a green site, like Cheltenham) which would suggest that making a permanent shift to Gloucester might not be the best idea.  There were also questions about whether there was bed capacity at Gloucester and they were reassured that the South West Clinical Senate, the independent internal panel that having looked at this last year had expressed a lot of doubts, was now reassured that the ‘bed test’ was met.  They were then, somewhat contradictorily, told that the final model for general surgery had not yet be agreed and because he personally couldn’t reconcile the two things, he had moved to recommend that the County Council refer the matter to the Secretary of State.  Whilst he had been supported by a number of other councillors, but unfortunately not enough and ultimately the proposals were given the green light by HOSC.  He felt that there were still a number of questions about how this was going to be done and they were told that planning for implementation would now start, but that the changes themselves would take place over a number of years and that they would endeavour to do their best to ensure that there was indeed capacity at Gloucester before services were moved across.  With this now a commitment on a strategic level, it left him in a quandary as to how CBC comment on the decision, given that it couldn’t be challenged, by us at least.

The Chair noted his disappointment that despite the concerns raised by this council on behalf of its residents, it seemed to him that they had been completely dismissed by the Trust. 

Councillor Horwood advised that there had been support from other district representatives, in particular from the East of the county, the Cotswolds and Stroud, who were equally concerned about these changes and about the timing of the reconfiguration.  It was noted that these concerns did not appear to be shared by representatives from Tewkesbury, the Forest of Dean or Gloucester and there was somewhat of a regional split in terms of the vote.  He queried whether we should make common calls with Stroud and Cotswold district councils to see whether there were some further representations which could be made direct to the Department of Health, or some of the other NHS bodies, like the South West Clinical Senate or the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Team to raise further concerns about this, regardless of what the HOSC had said.