I wanted to update you on yesterday’s Westmorland and Furness Council Health and Adult Scrutiny Committee Meeting (HASC).
Importantly, the committee has formally recommended that Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB must undertake a full public consultation on their plans to permanently downgrade level 3 critical care at Furness General Hospital. The detail of the recommendations made were that:
- That the Trust and Integrated Care Board (ICB) treat the change as a substantial variation under 2013 Regulations, requiring full public consultation
- That the Committee be briefed on the outcome of the engagement / consultation prior to a final decision being made by the ICB
I am incredibly pleased that we finally got there yesterday with the scrutiny committee voting in favour of a consultation. It was quite clearly what the public want, and it is part of what I have been asking for around this decision from the very start.
It is vital that the ICB now accept this recommendation, and run a full consultation which includes a properly worked up option for reopening ICU Level 3 at FGH. The ICB must also now share the full equality impact assessment, an independent assessment of the impact a downgrade would have on other services, and they need to publish all the outcome data from the transfers that have taken place since September. I have now written to the ICB to reinforce these points, and if you would like to contact them yourself then you can do so by calling 0300 373 3550, emailing lscicb.contactus@nhs.net, or writing to them at:
NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board
Level 3, Christ Church Precinct
County Hall
Fishergate Hill
Preston
PR1 8XB
I sat in the public gallery with about 70 other local residents who had come to listen to what the Integrated Care Board (ICB) had to say. The numbers were clearly more than the council were expecting as they had to find more chairs to accommodate us all!
I have to say I was really disappointed at how the meeting was run. The set up of microphones and speakers was not done in a way that considered the public at all. When people said they couldn’t hear the discussion, the Chair announced that “it’s not a public meeting”. To be clear, this is a meeting for the public to attend and they are entitled to be able to hear.
I believe the public and staff at FGH should have the chance to air publicly their concerns over the potential loss of a service at FGH that’s so important to us all.
I hope that the obvious frustration on display today has registered with the ICB that people do not have faith in them or feel listened to, and that they will want to rebuild that trust.
I will be setting up a public meeting in the next few weeks and will invite the ICB to take part. I’ll share more in due course.
