The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)
I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) on securing this important debate and I thank him for his work advocating for health services for his constituents. If there were any danger of Royston being forgotten, my right hon. and learned Friend and his activities are ensuring that that does not happen. It was genuinely a huge pleasure to meet him, his local ICB, Addenbrooke’s and in particular his local GPs, who I thought were a particularly impressive and thoughtful bunch with many interesting ideas that he is helping to catalyse. I also congratulate him on his imaginative and thoughtful advocacy on behalf of Royston Hospital and the opportunities presented by that site, which he has explained further in this debate.
We absolutely recognise the importance of suitable and well-functioning premises for healthcare facilities, expanding our NHS workforce further, and accommodating and enabling good-quality healthcare services for growing populations, particularly in areas such as Royston that are expanding so rapidly. We are taking action to support ICBs in that aim, and we are aware that many areas, including Royston, are set to experience further increases in population, which of course puts pressure on local health services.
We announced in the delivery plan for recovering access to primary care, which is part of the wider review going on of the national planning policy framework—the subject of the most recent debate, in fact—that we would be better considering how primary care infrastructure can be supported and how we can get more of the profits of development flowing into our primary care facilities. So we will be updating guidance to encourage our local planning authorities to engage with ICBs, particularly on large sites where there is opportunity and the need for extra primary care capacity.
NHS England is currently undertaking a formal assessment of all general practice premises through a primary care data collection programme, and this will provide an overview of the current capacity, suitability and ownership of all premises, with the information made available to local commissioners to inform their planning. But the activity of my right hon. and learned Friend in pointing out the opportunities and the challenges will be very clearly in the minds of his local ICB as it thinks about its future plans.
From 2023, a substantial proportion of primary care business-as-usual estates and GP capital is included within overall integrated care system capital funding envelopes. That allows local systems to take a more cohesive and coherent approach to how they spend capital across that system, and to prioritise the primary care investment needs in their own local strategies.
As well as funding from specific national programmes, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB—as we now know, it is responsible for commissioning health services in Royston; my right hon. and learned Friend was quite right about that—received £77 million in operational capital funding in 2022-23, totalling over £205 million during this spending review period. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough integrated care system has worked in partnership with NHS Property Services to develop the first estates strategy for the region. This was consulted on earlier in 2023 and approved by the ICB on 10 March.
The ICB has been working closely with primary care providers to try to stabilise primary care provision locally, and is now reviewing estates and local health care provision to make sure that they are also fit for the future. I know that the ICB is in conversation with the Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust, Granta Medical Services, and NHS Property Services—my right hon. and learned Friend has mentioned some of this—to review all the sites and consider options for a potential healthcare centre, co-located with primary care and diagnostic facilities.
In its decision-making capacity for estates and healthcare service commissioning, it is essential that the ICB is able to fully assesses capital and revenue costs, and service implications, that would arise from any decision. The ICB has noted that, while it recognises the community hospital is not currently functioning as it should, it is important that any future decisions on its use are not taken until it has fully considered and appraised all options, as my right hon. and learned Friend has quite rightly insisted on. That is why the ICB is about to begin a comprehensive listening and engagement exercise for an initial six weeks, encouraging local communities to take part in that conversation through a range of routes. The ICB will share more details in the coming weeks, on its website, on social media channels and through updates to key stakeholders, as well as via the printed materials in the community so that everyone knows that this conversation is ongoing.
Another approach and consideration that integrated care boards may take when they are shaping healthcare estates locally is the reconfiguration of services. This is a clinically-led local decision following appropriate engagement with patients and stakeholders. Responsibility for the delivery, implementation and funding decisions for services ultimately rests with the appropriate NHS commissioner. All substantial planned service change is subject to a full public consultation, and must meet Government and NHS England’s tests to ensure good decision making. As my right hon. and learned Friend has sometimes pointed out, community diagnostic centres are an important development to allow patients to access planned diagnostic care nearer to home, without the need to attend acute sites. That is only one of the ways we are doing that, including through virtual wards and a closer tie-up between primary and secondary care. Funding for community diagnostic centres has been allocated so that areas with unmet need receive more funding. That will help to tackle health inequalities.
My right hon. and learned Friend rightly raised the Priors Field surgery closure at Sutton. NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB is pleased to conform that from 1 April, Malling Health took on an interim contract to provide primary care services to the patients of Priors Field surgery. While that interim solution is being secured, the ICB continues to work with key stakeholders in the local community to ensure that communities in Sutton and the surrounding areas continue to have access to primary care services that meet their needs, both now and in the future. Knowing my right hon. and learned Friend well, I know that he will not be backward in coming forward to make the case strongly for investment in his local community and constituency, and we will continue the useful and helpful conversation that we have been having.
Sir Oliver Heald
I am grateful to the Minister for the help he has given us. Would he be prepared to continue to take an interest in Royston and its future plans, because I think that has been very helpful so far?
Neil O’Brien
I am happy to conclude as I started, by saying that I would love to continue that conversation with my right hon. and learned Friend, his constituents and local clinicians. I thought it was extremely interesting, and they had some powerful ideas. I look forward to continuing that with my right hon. and learned Friend and local clinicians.
Question put and agreed to.