The agenda for the 23rd February Calderdale & Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee meeting, at 3pm in the Council Chamber, Huddersfield Town Hall, gives a strong indication that the Councillors are NOT going to refer the so-called Right Care Right Time Right Place proposal to the Secretary of State for Health, but have keeled over and are letting the hospital cuts and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary A&E closure go ahead.
The proposal, which was overwhelmingly rejected in a 3 month public consultation last summer, is to :
- cut hospital beds and services,
- transfer many of them to the “community” in an un-evidenced scheme called Care Closer to Home
- knock down Huddersfield Royal Infirmary,
- replace it with a small planned care hospital and urgent care centre, and
- expand Calderdale Royal Hospital into the sole acute and emergency hospital for both Calderdale and Kirklees.
At the last Joint Health Scrutiny Committee Meeting in November, the Clinical Commissioning Groups had refused to accept the Councillors’ request to address 19 recommendations before going ahead to develop the full business case. So Councillors voted to go to a private reconciliation process with the Clinical Commissioning Groups.
The Clinical Commissioning Groups smugly told “stakeholders” that the Councillors’ decision to undertake the reconciliation process was their attempt at:
“managing the politics of change when faced with such strength of feeling and passion for our NHS…”
Sadly, this now looks about right.
Councillors failed to acknowledge ck999’s submission to the first private reconciliation meeting, which contained new information about the lack of evidence to support care closer to home plans. So we didn’t bother to send anything to the second one.
The agenda for the 23rd February meeting is:
Update on the reconciliation process and progress of the development of the Full Business Case
The Committee will consider the outcomes of the local resolution session with Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) and discuss the CCGs’ and CHFT’s planned work to develop the detail that will be required to explore implementation of the proposed changes to hospital and community services in Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield.
Contact: Richard Dunne, Principal Governance and Democratic Engagement Officer – 01484 221000
Public can make statements to the meeting
Members of the public and campaign groups can make deputation statements at the start of the meeting. CK999 will be doing so. You need to let the scrutiny officers Richard Dunne or Mike Lodge know you want to make a deputation statement before day of the meeting.
Here are their email addresses: richard.dunne@kirklees.gov.uk; mike.lodge@calderdale.gov.uk
NHS MATTERS! 