With most of our community hospitals now on the “for sale” list:
“Crisis will outlast the winter, warns NHS chief
NHS Confederation Chief Executive, Niall Dickson, has warned that the NHS faces a prolonged crisis as hospitals deal with “unsustainable and unsafe” bed occupancy rates. He said the winter crisis “is actually an all-year-round crisis” with hospitals struggling to meet demand.”
Source: Local Government Association
“Expectant mothers in Honiton and Okehampton have been dealt a further blow after it was revealed that the temporary suspension of birth services at both towns’ birth centres is to be extended.
The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust announced the news and cited on-going staff vacancies and long-term sickness absence across the maternity service as the reason.
The extension means that women will not be able to give birth at either site for a further three months until safe staffing levels have been attained. The suspension will be reviewed again early in 2018. .. .”
And the proverbial pigs might also take to the skies in early 2018 too!
“Bristol City Council has placed a spending freeze on “non-essential spending” in order to account for the impact of Conservative cuts to local government services.
According to a release from the council, the freeze means:
All maintenance of buildings, roads and parks will stop unless there is a risk to people’s health or safety. The council will also stop recruiting any permanent or temporary roles unless they provide legally-required services, and will not agree any new or extended contracts for goods or services without approval from the Chief Executive and statutory financial and legal officers.
More may be added to the list in coming weeks.
Deficit
It was predicted earlier this year that Bristol City Council faces a budget deficit of £60m for the 2019/20 financial year. The council has been making several millions of pounds of savings throughout 2016.
The spending freeze is a final attempt to balance its annual budget. According to a report to be delivered to the council’s Cabinet on 6 December, its efforts have reduced the gap from £35.4m at the beginning of the financial year to £27.5m by the end of September. The newly announced spending freeze is predicted to reduce it further to £16m, if accepted. …”
Wouldn’t THAT put the public cat amongst the private (fat) pigeons!
“Friend,
I’ve crunched the numbers on Justine Greening’s latest funding proposal – and it doesn’t look good. 17,385 schools still face real-terms cuts.
Find out how your school is affected now on schoolcuts.org.uk.
Education Secretary Justine Greening is responding to our campaign. In July she scraped together £1.3bn for schools from other parts of the education budget.
That’s because of every single person who made this campaign possible.
But we can’t rest yet. The money she moved around falls well short of reversing the cuts schools have been facing for years.
Find out how your school and community will be affected by cuts:
https://www.schoolcuts.org.https://www.schoolcuts.org.uk
Over the coming weeks we’ll be mobilising communities across the country to come together for our schools.
I hope you’ll join us.
Andrew
Andrew Baisley
School Cuts Campaigner
EDDC must be feeling VERY positive about the outcome of the PegasusLife Planning appeal as the sale of Knowle land, at around £7.1 million, is meant to contribute to the £10,361,000 cost (at last years costing – who knows what it is this year).
And does it include the £1m plus cost of Exmouth town hall?
Next year’s council tax deliberations will be interesting!
How does Owl know?
Well, he DOESN’T represent East Devon District Council – they told him to vote to keep local community hospital beds and maternity services open. He went to a DCC scrutiny meeting and voted to close them.
He DOESN’T represent the eight district councils he is supposed to represent at DCC [as a co-optee NOT a full member of the committee – and he was only allowed to vote because the badly-worded DCC constitution does not make the voting power of a co-optee clear] because he admitted in public that he did not consult any of the other councils before voting.
He DOESN’T represent DCC because he has not stood for election to that council and been successful.
WHAT was his reason/excuse/pathetic flim flam for his vote then?
That other attempts to refer the closure to the Secretary of State had failed, so this one would also fail.
How did he know that? Does he have a direct line to Hunt’s office or what passes for Hunt’s brain? He must have one or the other because he KNEW in advance what would happen and chose to vote on what he says he KNEW.
But if he KNEW what would happen (and he says he did) then why not vote as EDDC told him to do? The letter would have failed and he could still say he had voted as instructed at EDDC (though not as other councils wanted as he had no idea about that.
BUT – as he again admitted – it would have slowed down the closure. It would have given councils, the staff and supporters of the hospitals, the patients and their carers, more time to put alternative plans into action. More home care staff, more suitable plans for hospital buildings, better care for patients at home.
He did none of these things. He and Sarah Randall-Johnson consigned community hospitals to the rubbish heap.
And all because, he says, he knew what Jeremy Hunt would do.
So, now we know, he has a direct line to Jeremy Hunt and does what Jeremy Hunt wants him to do.
But why? Owl can only guess that he wants a gong from this despicable government to add to his only other qualification – an innkeepers certificate.
And the only way to do that is do the bidding of those who hand them out.
And if that isn”t his rationale, Owl would welcome a comment from him which would be published on the blog in full.
And what of his “representation” of the other councils? Who voted for him to be their representative? Was there a vote at all?
Or conversations in dark corners of County Hall?
“Teachers and parents are increasingly propping up schools with donations and buying essential items such as lavatory paper, surveys show.
Direct debits of up to £1,000 a year are being set up by some school staff to help pay for classroom equipment.
A survey by the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and the National Education Union suggested that 94 per cent of teachers had spent their own money supporting their schools.
Basics such as teabags for the staffroom and paper towels were also being withdrawn by school leaders, the survey of 1,800 teachers claimed.
Stationery items, books, art materials, emulsion paint and storage equipment for classrooms were among the items bought by teachers.
A rising number of parents are being asked to contribute cash to schools. Of 1,500 parents surveyed by the PTA UK association, 29 per cent said that they had been asked to supply teaching equipment, such as stationery and books, the TES reported.
Forty two per cent of parents had been asked to donate to the school fund compared with 37 per cent last year. There had also been a rise in voluntary contributions in the category of £10 to £304 a month, with 26 per cent donating this year compared with 21 per cent last year.
Michelle Doyle Wildman, acting chief executive of PTA UK, said: “Parents are a silent army supporting our schools to give every child the best possible outcome in their education.
“We are concerned that teachers and parents are reporting that they are contributing more to provide the essentials which many expect to be provided by the state.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “Our new fairer funding formula will replace the outdated funding system which saw our children have very different amounts invested in their education purely because of where they were growing up.”
Campaigners have challenged the fairness of this formula after a separate report indicated that 88 per cent of schools faced real-term cuts in funding between 2015 and 2020, despite the government’s pledge of an extra £1.3 billion.
Jo Yurky, of the parent-led campaign group Fair Funding for All Schools, said: “The national funding formula has become a joke already because there isn’t enough money in the system to go round. The vast majority of schools around the country continue to face a bleak financial situation.”
Source: Times, paywall
Oh, how different it will be if (when) Tories lose control of DCC. We will then hear Twiss and his party colleagues saying EXACTLY what Claire Wright is saying!
Party politics sucks. More Independents needed – urgently.
From the blog of Claire Wright:
“.. And the County Solicitor will be called to address the committee to remind it of its responsibilities.
Devon County Council conservatives blocked my proposal yesterday to record significant concerns over the biggest cuts facing Devon’s health service in living memory.
Sonja Manton from NEW Devon Clinical Commissioning Group gave an update on the plans to slash around £500m by 2020, as part of Devon’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP).
The county’s STP is one of 44 across the country and is the government’s main programme of major cost cutting and centralisation in the NHS, to stem a £30bn shortfall by 2020.
I asked a number of questions mainly on staffing, budgets and buildings, along the following lines:
What are the vacancies and how do you plan to fill them and when do you plan to make redundancies (which has been previously hinted at)?
The answer was woolly (and no amount of pushing would encourage Dr Manton to reveal more). It contained no information on numbers, but she did mention that there is a 30 per cent turnover rate across Devon, in home care staff and that 75 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on staffing.
Next I asked whether pregnant women would still have a genuine choice where to give birth, as three community maternity units at Okehampton, Tiverton and Honiton were set to close (two have already closed temporarily due to staffing issues).
The answer was that the new service would meet national guidelines, so I pushed and asked whether pregnant women would be able to have a choice of a midwife led unit and how far they would have to travel. The answer was that there will be a new midwife led unit at the RD&E, adjacent to the consultant led unit.
So essentially women from all over Devon will soon have to either have a home birth, or travel to Exeter to give birth, whether that’s at a midwife led unit or a consultant led unit. There was a bit of a disagreement about me saying the current midwife led units were closed, despite the announcement having already been announced that this was the intention and two being temporarily closed due to staffing pressures.
Next I asked how many more beds were planned to be cut.
More prevarication.
I pushed. Was the figure of 600 bed cuts recognised, which was the broad figure in the first draft of the STP?
Yes this figure was recognised but it depended on a raft of issues.
Finally, I asked about the selling off of redundant estate. How many, where and when? Another non answer ensued. It was the next piece of work.
Entirely frustrated at the refusal to answer questions, not because I believe, the answers are not known but because there is a total refusal to get into any detail whatsoever, I expressed my complete frustration and disappointment at the answers. It made no difference.
Other councillors asked other questions.
At the end of the debate I proposed a resolution that the committee express significant concerns over the STP, its potential effect on patient care and the lack of transparency so far.
I called for urgent information on staffing, beds, buildings and budgets, in particular.
The proposal was seconded by Chair, Sara Randall Johnson, who added that a piece of work would be done on this.
Unfortunately, my wording appeared to upset the conservative group. Cllr Philip Sanders said he didn’t like that I had said the process appeared not to be transparent and wanted this word deleted. I replied that that it was entirely justified and refused to amend my proposal.
But fellow Conservative, Phil Twiss, wanted ANY mention of concerns deleted.
He said: “We don’t need the emotional language.”
Three years ago, Cllr Twiss reported me and this blog to the police cyber crime unit. You can read about it here, if you like – http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/eddc_tory_whip_reports_me_to_the_police_for_a_comment_on_this_blog
Cllr Twiss then proposed that ALL my words were deleted, simply retaining the section that relating to a task group being set up.
This was voted through by the vast majority of the Conservative group.
Letting down every single resident in Devon who relies on the NHS.
Yes, I think that’s everyone.
Ambulance Trust response targets are failing and RD&E unable to discharge its patients in good time
Later in the meeting we were examining the performance review.
The South West Ambulance Trust which used to meet the national target of eight minutes largely without a difficulty, are now significantly under target. Only 59 per cent of calls were answered within eight minutes, across Northern, Eastern and Western Devon, in July of this year. The target is 75 per cent.
Lives are surely being put at risk. Certainly news of the failures are hitting the local media.
The narrative attached to the graph claimed that the reason was the rural nature of the South West. Yet the South West has been rural for years and this wasn’t a problem previously. Of course there have been cuts to budgets, and reductions in the number of ambulances so that is more likely to be the cause of the failure.
Problem with delayed discharges at the RD&E
Similarly, the RD&E was shown to have a significant problem with delayed discharges.
In June this year a daily average of 66 beds were occupied by patients who were well enough to go home.
It was obvious from the graph that the problem was clearly way out of kilter with other local NHS trusts.
This was largely to do with major staffing problems in the care sector, an officer confirmed.
of course it is these staff among others that we will rely on, to look after people in their own homes following community hospital bed cuts.
I proposed a resolution that the committee record its concerns at the ambulance response rates and the high level of delayed discharges at the RD&E and invite both trusts to the next committee meeting.
I had to argue with the chair that the proposal should retain the bit about recording concerns, before it was seconded by Cllr Brian Greenslade.
One of the Labour councillors was unhappy with me mentioning the RD&E at all in my resolution because she was chairing a piece of work looking at delayed discharges. I tried to point out that the resolution supported her work but she was adamant …
Then Cllr Twiss started up again. He said he didn’t like my wording and that I was simply making a statement that “looks good in the press.”
I reminded Cllr Twiss that the committee is legally constituted to scrutinise health services on behalf of the people and our job is to hold the health service to account. In fact such words had been used recently in a standards committee hearing minutes.
Anyone who is familiar with the basic requirements of an audit trail will recognise the importance of the committee recording concerns about service failures in this way.
I told Cllr Twiss that I intended to ask in the work programme agenda item, that the county solicitor attends the next committee meeting and outlines our responsibilities.
The final amendment removed my words about concerns about the RD&E’s delayed discharges but retained the words about the ambulance trust target failure.
So Ambulance Trust representatives will be invited to the next meeting.
I have certainly heard anecdotally that things are very challenging indeed within the Trust, with too few ambulances and low staff morale.
I duly asked in the final agenda item for the County Solicitor to attend the next meeting to remind the committee of its remit.
Some councillors appear to be in sore need of training.
Playing political games with health scrutiny resolutions is a dirty and unacceptable game.
NHS Property Services and buildings
Cllr Martin Shaw spoke to a report he submitted to the committee on this. The upshot will be that a sub group will examine the future of community hospital buildings.
The speaker itemised webcast can be viewed here – https://devoncc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/301904”
Was that person even on earth?!!!
“The Ministry of Defence spent £64,000 on mobile internet use for a single phone last year, new figures have revealed.
The hefty bill was the most expensive in a list of staggering figures which the Government department paid out enable its staff to stay in touch while abroad.
The MoD forked out an eye-watering £324,407 to pay for the data roaming charges for the ten most expensive mobile phones bills alone. …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4909440/MoD-spent-64-000-internet-usage-phone-year.html
“Sustainability and transformation partnerships need more funding and to be better implemented, the Healthcare Financial Management Association/CIPFA health and social care conference heard today.
The partnerships are the best hope for health and social care integration, Richard Humphries, a senior policy fellow from the think-tank the King’s Fund, told delegates at the conference in London.
“The ambitions of the plans are good but the delivery and implementation is fraught with problems in the current financial climate,” he said.
“I think everybody agrees that we do need to transform social care but history tells us that the only way you do that is to have transformational funding for the double running costs of building up services in the community so you can then reduce hospital activity.”
He added: “The existing system is fragmented, based on commissioners and providers. Nobody wants another top-down reorganisation to reverse those [current] reforms.
“So [greater integration] is being done through the backdoor, essentially, through these STPs.”
Humphries believed STPs were the “right direction of travel” but noted that there were issues.
He outlined the following problems:
The STPs are being driven by NHS financial control, which he said was “unrealistic”
There are “heroic assumptions” being made about how much care you can shift out of hospitals
The plans are not engaging local government and social care enough.
Humphries said: “Although it is a laudable motive, the current structures that we’ve got in both commissioning and providers, separation, funding, payment mechanisms was designed from an entirely different purpose when it was based on the idea of competition and choice being much more important than collaboration.”
The conference also heard the findings from a survey conducted by CIPFA and iMPOWER. It showed 55 of 56 respondents said they did not believe joint working will be achieved between local government and the NHS in the next five years.
Rob Whiteman, CIPFA’s chief executive, commenting on the survey of 25 local authorities and 31 NHS bodies, said: “While it is now clear what the overall ambitions are for STPs, the survey released today highlights there may be major barriers to achieving these.
“The survey shows that there are some significant concerns with regard to joint working, which is vital to the success of STPs. Therefore, serious care and attention must now be paid to building relationships and trust between partners.”
Whiteman also echoed the sentiment of Humphries when he said suitable levels of funding were needed, or the ambitious targets set by the STPs would turn out to be “financially unachievable”. “
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/09/stps-need-more-funding-and-be-implemented-better-0
“Government benefit cuts are to blame for soaring levels of homelessness, local councils and housing providers have said.
The number of people being declared homeless has increased by more than a third since 2010, while the number of people sleeping rough on the streets has surged by even more: up 134 per cent since the Conservatives came to power.
A string of Government welfare changes – including cuts to housing benefit and the introduction of the benefit cap – have led to the dramatic increase, according to the organisations charged with tackling the crisis. …
… According to the survey, 61 per cent of local councils and 49 per cent of housing associations also said the fact a prospective tenant is unlikely to receive enough in welfare payments to cover their rent is now the most common reason for someone being turned away for home.
It comes just days after a damning report by the National Audit Office accused government ministers of a “light-touch approach” to tackling homelessness, and concluded that benefit cuts were “likely to have contributed” to the rise in homelessness. Tackling the problem is costing the state £1bn a year, the report said.
In an attempt to get a grip on spiralling homelessness, Government ministers have placed a legal obligation on local councils to help people find homes.
Typically, this would involve helping someone into a property managed by a housing association – but cuts to benefits mean associations are increasingly having to turn tenants away. …”
“Brexit means a new model of devolution is needed because different areas of the UK have varying capacities to cope with leaving the EU, a CIPFA North East event has heard.
The regions’ capacity to deal with Brexit could be made more difficult as decision making is centered around Whitehall, Anna Round, senior research fellow on the North East from the IPPR think-tank, told the event in Newcastle yesterday.
“I think the capacity for regions to shape their future outside the EU is immensely important,” she said, at the event hosted by CIPFA and the Brexit Advisory Commission.
“There is a challenge there about how devolution will progress, how it is distributed meaningfully between Whitehall and regions.
“I think the current model of devolution is not going to do that, that needs to change.”
Round noted recent studies showed the “extraordinary” levels of economic disparity in the UK between London and the rest of the country. This was the most profound imbalance of this kind in the EU, she said.
She stated this was historically made worse by the “huge political imbalance in a hugely centralised country”.
The research fellow suggested looking again at the scale of the areas covered by devolution deals and moving to a more federalised system.
She suggested the devolution areas should be larger to give them more ‘clout’.
Round spoke on the day it was revealed two councils – Barnsley and Doncaster councils have pulled out of a South Yorkshire devolution deal because they said it was too small to be effective.
The leaders of the councils argued a Yorkshire-wide devolution deal would be better. A Communities and Local Government spokesperson said the department would not consider this.
David Bell, from the university of Stirling, speaking at the Newcastle event yesterday agreed with Round’s assessment of the regional disparity in the UK.
Although, he believed a federal structure was possible he said that the wider geographical areas in England did not currently have a common sense of identity, such as states in the US.
“It isn’t clear how to you from here [current system] to there [federal system],” he said.
Anthony Zito, professor of European policy for Newcastle University, also shared the view that the UK capacity of the regions to cope with Brexit needed to be each taken into account to make a success of leaving the EU.
Zito said he was not sure how the national and local governments in the UK would cope with the profound change that would result from Brexit.
This was because of the loss of benefits EU membership provided, he believed. “The UK’s ability to protect its environment, to enhance its trade, all those things which the European Union, I would argue, helped [provide].”
Zito asked how the UK will replace, for example, the skills and knowledge currently brought into the country through freedom of movement.
He also said “Brexit is taking knowledge and people with expertise away from other pressing problems” facing the wider public sector.
CIPFA and the Brexit Advisory Commission hosted the breakfast session to explore the risks and opportunities of Brexit for public services in the North East.”
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/09/brexit-means-regions-need-new-model-devolution
“Overall, one in four schools are over capacity in Year 7 – the first year of secondary school. A further 27 per cent of secondary schools are fully subscribed in Year 7 – meaning there isn’t enough teaching space available.
The figures – revealed in Freedom of Information responses from 100 English councils – show a 9 per cent increase in overstretched admissions.
By 2022/23 more than 125,000 children face missing out on a secondary school place altogether, according to warnings from the Local Government Association.
In Rutland 86 per cent of schools started the term over capacity.
In Slough and Solihull the figure was 80 per cent while Redcar, Bury, Redcar and Cleveland was 60 per cent over-subscribed.” …
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4502353/secondary-schools-over-capacity-full-figures/
“Efforts to improve teacher training and retention have failed to demonstrate a positive impact or value for money, according to the National Audit Office.
A report from the spending watchdog, out on Tuesday last week, showed although schools were spending about £21bn a year on training teachers there remained a problem with staff retention.
Amyas Morse, head of NAO, said: “Schools are facing real challenges in retaining and developing their teachers, with growing pupil numbers and tighter budgets.
“The trends over time and variation between schools are concerning, and there is a risk that the pressure on teachers will grow.”
The NAO noted government spending on training and supporting new teachers went down from £555m in 2013/14 to £35.7m in 2016-17 on programmes for teacher development and retention, of which £91,000 was aimed at improving teacher retention.
Growing workloads were cited as an issue for the sector, the watchdog NAO, and that in 2016 34,910 teachers (8.1% of the qualified workforce) left for reasons other than retirement.
In an NAO teacher survey, 67% of respondents reported that workload is a barrier to retention.
A Department for Education survey found classroom teachers and middle leaders worked, on average, 54.4 hours during the reference week in March 2016, including the weekend.
The loss of some existing staff comes against the background of an overall increase in the number of teachers in state-funded schools in England which went up by 15,500 (3.5%) between 2010 and 2016, reaching 457,300 in total last year.
But the number of secondary school teachers fell by 10,800 (4.9%) over the same period as these schools face significant challenges to keep pace with rising pupil numbers.
Schools filled only half of their vacancies with teachers with the experience and expertise required and, in around a tenth of cases, schools did not fill the vacancy at all, an NAO survey of school leaders found. …”
From a correspondent”
“Could you, through your esteemed publication, inform your readers of a play that will be performed in the committee rooms of the HofP based upon the experience of Food Bank users.
All MPs have been invited and I would suggest to those readers represented by Huge Swin[r]e that he may like a ‘reminder’ to attend, where he may be interested to hear the stories of those making a ‘lifestyle choice’ to use them.
Yours
[signature]
(Who shall be urging their own MP Neil Parrish, to do the same)”
“The UK’s coastal communities are among the country’s worst off for earnings, employment, health and education, a report for the BBC has found.
The Social Market Foundation said the economic gap between coastal and non-coastal places has grown.
Average wages are £3,600 a year lower in these “pockets of deprivation”, according to the think tank.
Meanwhile, the minister for coastal communities has announced £40m in funding to help coastal areas.
The report, produced for BBC Breakfast, found that five of the 10 local authorities in the UK with the highest unemployment rate for the three months to March 2017 were coastal. These were Hartlepool, North Ayrshire, Torridge, Hastings, South Tyneside and Sunderland. It also found those in employment in coastal areas were likely to be paid less. Of the 98 local authorities on the coast, 85% had pay levels below the UK’s average in 2016.
… The report found the economic gap between coastal and non-coastal areas has widened from 23% to 26% from 1997 to 2015.”
A Guardian letters correspondent has a theory:
“The decision to release the pay cap only for police and prison officers will inevitably attract strong criticism from nurses and others, but it makes sense. Most Tory MPs probably have private healthcare, but they might well need the services of the police to intervene between them and the electorate during the conference season and beyond. Tory peers should also support the decision; Lords Archer, Hanningfield and Taylor of Warwick [Tory peers who have spent time in prison] could tell them how helpful prison officers can be at difficult times.
Geoff Booth
Knebworth, Hertfordshire”
“Only 93 beds have been freed by an NHS drive to get elderly patients home quicker, official figures show.
Doctors warned that the health service was not ready for winter after figures showed it ended the summer by missing most of its main targets.
This week Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, said that the health service needed to do more as a severe outbreak of flu in Australia threatened to move north for winter. He has given hospitals until November to free 3,000 beds by sending home patients who do not need to be on wards.
However, at the end of July there were 5,861 beds occupied because no suitable care could be arranged for patients elsewhere, barely down from 5,954 last year. “Progress over the next eight to ten weeks is going to have to accelerate markedly in conjunction with local authorities in order to free up further bed capacity ahead of winter,” a spokesman for NHS England said.
Long waits for routine surgery are also up, with 390,659 patients having waited more than 18 weeks, the highest number since 2008. More than four million people are on a waiting list.
A&E visits were down but only 90.3 per cent of patients were seen within four hours, compared with 91 per cent last summer. The target is 95 per cent.”
Source: Times pay wall
East Devon Watch 