NHS Urgent Care: Staffordshire

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Josh Newbury]

I saw a post from my hon. Friend on Facebook earlier today about this very matter. I know that he is fighting very hard on that on behalf of his constituents. I hope that my integrated care board listens to the concerns of my constituents, and I hope that that is reflected in Coventry and Warwickshire and that he can get some progress on a doctor-led unit.

For the past six years, people in Cannock Chase have had to travel to Stafford, Lichfield, Walsall or Wolverhampton for care that they would once have accessed locally. That is not simply an inconvenience; it undermines the objectives of urgent care reform, increases pressure on neighbouring hospitals and pushes more people into A&E. That is exactly the opposite of what the urgent care review is supposed to achieve.

Most worrying of all are those who are not seeking care at all. Not everybody can drive and not everyone has access to reliable public transport, particularly in places such as Staffordshire. When patients are faced with long, complicated journeys for what should be straightforward local treatment, many simply put it off; conditions then worsen, complications develop and people ultimately end up needing an ambulance for something that could have been treated earlier, more cheaply and closer to home.

At the engagement events and in conversations with me since, constituents have told me that the MIU was a lifeline when they did not need A&E but their GP felt they needed to go to hospital. Cannock Chase hospital is very close to a bus station, and most people locally can catch a single bus to reach it; in contrast, travelling by bus to MIUs in Lichfield, Stafford, Walsall or Wolverhampton can be difficult, often involving multiple changes and long journey times. As a result, many of my constituents are paying for taxis instead, which is a significant financial burden.

The issue becomes even clearer when we look at the demographics of my constituency. It has a slightly older population than the national average, with more than 19,500 residents aged 65 and over—around a fifth of our population. Almost half of those older residents—more than 9,300 people—are living with a long-term health condition, a higher proportion than we see nationally. These are the residents who are most likely to need timely urgent care, who are more vulnerable to deterioration if treatment is delayed, and who often face the greatest barriers when services are not available locally. The NHS’s own data shows higher attendances at both surrounding MIUs since ours closed, but not by the total amount of previous activity at Cannock Chase hospital, backing up what residents have been telling us about not always seeking care.

We can also see how these pressures play out in practice at nearby hospitals that many of my constituents rely on when local urgent care is not available. Although Royal Stoke University hospital is not in my constituency, it is a key part of the wider system and serves residents right across our county. In the final quarter of last year alone, that hospital saw more than 33,000 A&E attendances, and over 6,800 patients waited more than 12 hours to be admitted or discharged. That is more than one in five attendances—double the national average—placing the hospital among the most pressured in the country.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Royal Stoke hospital is in my constituency, and one of the things its staff tell me is that if it were not for the Haywood walk-in unit up in Stoke-on-Trent, Leek Moorland hospital or Stafford MIU, the A&E would simply fall over. Naturally, people in Staffordshire gravitate to the A&E when they want help, and the fact that my hon. Friend’s constituency is without an urgent treatment centre has a ripple effect across the county. Will he join me in asking the Minister to say when she winds up whether she has any data demonstrating the impact that the lack of a facility in Cannock is having on neighbouring hospitals, and therefore on the services that are experienced by my constituents and those in constituencies across the county?

[Josh Newbury]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow Staffordshire MP for his intervention. He has highlighted a critical point: every part of our NHS can have a knock-on effect on the others, so the system needs to work as a whole. We cannot just focus on individual services; we have to see how it works in the round. That is what the review is trying to do, but of course, many of us feel it is not hitting on what it needs to.

I do not raise these figures to criticise staff, who are working under immense strain, or the Government, who are making strong progress on addressing the pressures I have described. I raise them to underline a simple point: as we have heard, when local urgent care is unavailable, demand does not disappear, it is concentrated elsewhere. Making sure patients get the right care in the right place is critical—too many people end up in A&E not because they need to be there, but because there is nowhere else for them to go. Perhaps in the past, our MIU was not always used for its intended purpose, but even that was often a symptom of failings in community care.

Urgent treatment centres will be a vital part of the fabric of our NHS, sitting between primary care and emergency departments. Not having that service for a population of over 100,000 people is a real challenge, and it weakens the wider system. In the 17 months since the review of urgent care was unveiled, I have had many conversations with our ICB about urgent care more broadly, as have GPs, councillors and campaigners. I know that they are putting in place services that make good on the Government’s commitment to shift care from hospitals out into the community. I welcome the introduction of a wound care local enhanced service, which recognises that wound care was previously a key reason for patients to access the MIU, even though their homes are a better place for that care to take place. This shows that sustained conversations about our local health needs and inequalities are starting to translate into results.

I hope that building on this, Cannock Chase can be a forerunner in the roll-out of multidisciplinary neighbourhood teams. The health inequalities we sadly have locally, coupled with the distance to many secondary care services that I have referred to, means that we would benefit hugely from that model of supercharged community care. Better than having to catch a bus to Lichfield or Stafford would be heading to Cannock Chase hospital, but better still would be getting that care at home. That is what I am calling for, and will continue to fight for, on behalf of my constituents.

There are areas where Staffordshire is performing strongly. Urgent community response services are exceeding national targets, winter planning has helped to stabilise hospital stays during periods of peak demand, and vaccination programmes are having an impact on admissions. This is not an argument against reform; it is an argument for consistency and fairness. If urgent care reform is about reducing avoidable A&E attendance, improving patient flow and ensuring equitable access across the system, then Cannock Chase cannot continue to remain an outlier.

Crucially, this is not just about rhetoric. The Government are making huge strides in the NHS nationally, backed by reform, investment and a determination to ensure that people get the right care in the right place at the right time. That is why I welcome the investment already being made in the Chadsmoor medical practice, the Rawnsley surgery and the Red Lion surgery in my constituency. That will make a huge difference to people’s everyday experience of the NHS that they can see and feel. Strengthening primary care does not remove the need for local urgent care—one cannot simply replace the other.

My ask today is simple and constructive. I am not asking the Minister to pre-empt the outcome of the ICB’s review—I know that she cannot do that—and I am certainly not arguing against the reform of urgent care that prompted this review. I am calling for clarity, fairness and alignment between national ambition and local delivery. If we believe in shifting care out of hospitals and into communities, if we believe in reducing avoidable A&E attendance and if we believe in equitable access to urgent care, then Cannock Chase must have that as part of its future.

I hope that 2026 can be the year that sees an expansion of urgent care back into my part of the world, and I urge the Royal Wolverhampton NHS trust to make better use of Cannock Chase hospital, which many residents feel remains underutilised compared with how things were under the former Mid Staffordshire NHS trust. I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that local voices will continue to be properly heard, that decisions will be communicated clearly and promptly, and that the Government will work with the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB to ensure that communities such as mine are not left without urgent care provision.

Urgent care, at its simplest, is about whether someone with a broken wrist, a deep cut or a worsening infection knows where to go and can actually get there. I look forward to continuing to work constructively with the ICB, the Minister and colleagues across the House to ensure that urgent care in Staffordshire truly works for the communities that we all serve.

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

It is a pleasure to respond to this debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) for securing it and raising in a constructive way the important matter of urgent care in Staffordshire. It is always good to have more proud NHS non-clinical bureaucrats in this place to pursue these issues.

This Government are clear that the patient should expect, as my hon. Friend says, high standards of care. We recognise that that has not always been the case in recent years, with too many people waiting too long to access the help they need, but we are determined to change that. We are taking serious, sustained action to restore timely access to high-quality urgent care across the country. Our urgent and emergency care plan for 2025-26 sets out that clear path to strengthening urgent care outside hospitals, so that patients can access timely, appropriate support without needing to attend A&E unless clinically necessary. We are increasing the number of patients treated closer to home by scaling up our urgent community response teams providing rapid two-hour care, expanding virtual wards to provide hospital-level treatment at home and growing multidisciplinary neighbourhood teams that intervene early and prevent avoidable deterioration.

We will support patients to book into the most appropriate urgent care service for them, whether via 111 or the NHS app, and we are using data from shared patient care records and digital tools to support better triage, to join up services and to anticipate pressures before they arise. That is backed by £2 billion of investment in NHS digital infrastructure. We are also investing £250 million to strengthen same-day emergency care and urgent treatment centre provision, helping systems across the country to avoid unnecessary admissions and supporting the same-day diagnosis, treatment and discharge of patients.

Turning specifically to my hon. Friend’s constituency, I know the work that he has done with his local NHS to ensure that his constituents’ voices are heard. In preparing for this debate, I also met the local NHS to understand better the situation that he describes. It is taking steps to strengthen urgent care capacity and to improve patient pathways, in line with the policy outlines that we have made. I am also aware of the concerns about the closure of the minor injuries unit.

As my hon. Friend said, following the closure during covid the ICB undertook a review of whether the service should be reopened. The review concluded that demand previously met by the Cannock Chase minor injuries unit was being met elsewhere. In that time, the NHS has strengthened the wider urgent care offer for local people. It includes enhanced primary care—my hon. Friend talked about wound care, which is very important to local people—as well as GP out-of-hours services accessed via NHS 111, urgent community response services, and access to urgent treatment centres in other locations. Those arrangements ensure that patients can receive timely and appropriate care.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, neighbourhood integrated teams will be scaled up, delivering more proactive and preventive care in order to intervene earlier and reduce avoidable deterioration. Those teams, as he outlined, are central to shifting care out of hospital and towards community care support. Urgent treatment centres do play a vital role in the wider urgent care system, providing timely assessment and treatment for patients whose needs are urgent but not life-threatening. The system is therefore ensuring that those centres meet national standards, improving consistency and simplifying access for the public, to help divert activity away from type 1 emergency departments and ensure that more patients receive the right level of care closer to home. Let me say in response to my hon. Friend and also his neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), that it is important for Members in the area to understand that that wider movement of capacity will ensure that they have the necessary information.

I am pleased to report that the system in Staffordshire has become the first in the midlands to establish a 24/7 integrated care co-ordination centre, which provides a single access point for clinicians, co-ordinates urgent community services, and prevents unnecessary A&E attendances. Nearly half the calls to the service are now successfully redirected away from hospital, which helps patients to access help more quickly and eases the pressure on A&E departments. Moreover, capacity has been increased in urgent community response services, virtual wards, same day-emergency care and intermediate care. Urgent community response performance is particularly strong, with more than 78% of referrals seen within two hours—well above the national ambition of 70%. Additional clinical resource has been put in place to meet rising demand and support resilience through the winter.

This work sits alongside strengthened pathways for people whom my hon. Friend described—especially those who may be elderly and experience falls, those who may be frail, those who need end-of-life care, and those in care homes. We need to ensure that those patients in particular receive timely and appropriate support and are confident that the service is there for them in that time of need. Together, these integrated services are helping to manage demand in A&E departments, improve patient flow, and make best use of urgent care capacity across Staffordshire, including in Cannock Chase. As my hon. Friend rightly said, those improvements must be felt by the people of Cannock Chase, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central also pointed out, we need to ensure that demand is well managed and to support people across Staffordshire.

We are planning for the future as well. Our 10-year health plan sets out the long-term vision for urgent and emergency care reform. As I have said, a central priority is to shift care from hospitals into the community, and that will be driven by continuing to expand urgent care through urgent community response, virtual wards, rapid access clinics and better co-ordination through neighbourhood-based care.

Our plan is working: in the past 18 months the Government have invested a record £26 billion in the NHS, delivered more than 5 million additional appointments, cut waiting lists by 312,000, and launched the 10-year health plan to deliver more care in the community. We know that there is more to do, but our investment and modernisation are making a difference, and the NHS is showing clear signs of recovery. Thanks to these steps, this winter ambulances are arriving faster, A&E waits are shorter, and more patients are being treated closer to home.

I pay tribute to NHS staff across Staffordshire and across the country. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, healthcare assistants and support staff continue to show exceptional commitment, often in the most challenging circumstances, and they deserve our thanks and support. We know that the NHS is under pressure, but this Government are taking decisive action through our urgent and emergency care plan, our winter preparations, and our long-term reforms. We are putting the service back on its feet, and ensuring that patients receive timely, high-quality care.

As we make the NHS fit for the future by making the changes we need to move care out of hospital and into communities, and by making the switch from analogue to digital and from sickness to prevention, we have to communicate better with patients and the public, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase has clearly outlined this evening. That includes keeping MPs well informed of the proposals.

[Gareth Snell]

I want briefly to highlight the fact that one of the perverse things in Staffordshire is that my constituency is serviced by the Royal Stoke hospital, as is Stafford. Its headquarters are within the ICB that funds it. Some of the places that the Minister has mentioned this evening include Cannock, Burton and Tamworth. Their hospitals are smaller and are linked to a much larger acute hospital in a trust that is headquartered outside the ICB. That is a perversity for cross-border invoicing, and it sometimes make us wonder what the incentive is for some of the trusts. Could a group of us MPs meet the Minister to discuss that?

[Karin Smyth]

When I became a Minister, my hon. Friend was one of the first through the door to share some of the issues in Stoke. In my meeting today, in which I had my map in front of me to point out some of the journey times, his comments were in my mind.

As I said, it is really important that we take local people with us as we move the system on the basis of the best clinical evidence. For me, that includes making sure that MPs are well informed of the proposals and the rationale behind them. As we have heard today, MPs are willing to be very constructive advocates for local systems on behalf of their constituents. I welcome the engagement with Members on this issue, and I am very happy to continue working with my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, other colleagues in Staffordshire and NHS leaders on how we can further strengthen emergency care services for people in Cannock Chase and, indeed, across Staffordshire.

Question put and agreed to.