Health Services: Shropshire

(asked on 19th December 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost of the Future Fit process in Shropshire.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 13th January 2020

Telford and Wrekin Council is an active member of the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Sustainability and Transformation Partnership. It has been fully involved in and scrutinised the Future Fit process and provided formal feedback to the public consultation undertaken by the NHS Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and NHS Telford and Wrekin CCG. The outcome of the consultation was a decision to designate the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital as an emergency care site and the Princess Royal Hospital a Planned Care site, with a 24-hour Urgent Care Centre at both hospitals.

The Council referred the Future Fit plans to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who requested advice from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. On 2 October 2019 the Secretary of State communicated his decision to locate the Emergency Care Centre for the region at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital whilst keeping the accident and emergency (A&E) at the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) open as an A&E Local. He asked NHS England to work with the CCGs and Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust to develop the A&E local model and to set out details on how the model could be delivered at PRH. The Secretary of State received these details from NHS England on 5 November 2019 and requested further work, including the implementation of the A&E local model, on 6 January 2020.

Clinicians have been involved in the Future Fit process from the outset and are fully supported in bringing about the necessary changes to local hospital services in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin.

The consultation into the future of the hospitals in Shrewsbury, Telford and Wrekin has taken some time to conclude. This has been partly due to the robust nature of the assurance process and ensuring the views of the public and other stakeholders have been taken into account. CCGs have invested much time into this process to ensure that the right model was consulted on and people could have their say and their views considered. The process has also necessitated a revised business case to be submitted to NHS England and NHS Improvement.

The cost of the consultation process is in line with other similar consultations of this scale.

Ministers are not in a position to comment on the length of time taken by opponents of the Future Fit process for seeking legal advice on whether to proceed towards a judicial review.

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