Photograph from the Meeting Held at the Memorial Hall Wrington 12/02/2010 by Bob Bowen
The following speech was delivered to the North Somerset Health Overview & Scrutiny Panel on Thursday the 18th of February, it outlines the current state of play and my own position on the issue of keeping the Wrington and Churchill Surgeries open for the people.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have been following the development of this issue since October last year, and in particular attended two public meetings called by Save Our Surgeries in Wrington last Friday and Saturday. I have found the consultation, far from inclusive, appropriate or proportionate for the community and service users. In brief, whatever happened to services following the needs of the patients?
To indicate this I would like to give you a round up of the points made during and after these two meetings:
Firstly it was acknowledged that the doctors in Wrington and Churchill have given an excellent service over the years and that the SOS campaign is about continuing this service.
- The service that people need is, for the most part, for the elderly and for young mums and their children, and these services are best accessed separately in Wrington and Churchill.
- The consultation process from the PCT has so far been flawed, because its whole premise has been narrowly focused, skewed towards the option of a single surgery. The option of maintaining the status quo, as presented in the document needs far greater examination.
- Wrington has had a surgery for a very long time. In terms of living memory, a 98 year old villager, remembers her own house used as the surgery during the first World War. Possession is sometimes described as 9/10ths of the law, and I would like you to think well on this. Many people moved to Wrington because it has a surgery, they and others in the village, are accustomed to this service and dependent on it, and to take it away from them, without taking into account their feelings and needs, is just plain wrong.
- The proposed site at Pudding Pie Lane has a number of important drawbacks which are not considered in the review document. For example Wrington, has other services: a shop, a chemist, a dentist, an estate agent, a garage, two pubs and the village school. The Pudding Pie site has little near it apart from a school. Thus if people have to drive to reach a doctor, they may decide to register themselves at Yatton instead, where at least they can access and use other services at the same time. If people vote with their feet, the Pudding Pie site will become an expensive white elephant, and Wrington’s own services are likely to suffer or even close as a result.
- There is also the problem of the heavy traffic, where Pudding Pie Lane joins the B3133, the lack of a pavement and the close proximity of the primary school, which will cause both the surgery and the school access problems at school opening and closing time, and the fact it’s a green field site, which will be lost for good if it is built on.
- A further problem that has come to light concerns the proposed minibus service. Not only would this cost an estimated £25,000 a year to run, but it seems it would have no child seats and cannot carry wheel chairs. So the very people who would need the service most, could not be accommodated. If this is true it begs the question, if they can’t get this right, what else needs further detailed investigation and scrutiny?
- Much of the problem of the consultation has been the lack of information passed to the people of Wrington and Churchill, with a culture of secrecy covering the whole process allowing occasional leaks. For example latest figures given at the SOS meeting, indicated that while the current notional rent paid by the PCT is £70,000 a year for the Wrington and Churchill Surgeries combined, the expected rent payable on a single surgery would be in the region of £170,000 a year. Since the PCT and the Tax payer will have to foot this bill, it is difficult to understand what the appeal of the new single surgery is. Local people don’t want it, and it would be considerably more expensive than the current arrangement. There is need for full transparency from the PCT over the details, including the actual level of costs involved, otherwise the people cannot be blamed for assuming the worst.
There was also some talk of the ‘Care Quality Commission’ requirement for better wheelchair access and privacy, and the suggestion that more space is needed to meet these new regulations than the Wrington Surgery currently offers.
- The first point to make is that it seems that these regulations do not actually apply to existing buildings. However even if they do, or will do at some future date, there are still other possible solutions which would allow the people of Wrington and Churchill to keep their surgeries. In the case of Yatton and Congresbury for example, two surgeries are being maintained, with Yatton Surgery being extended vertically to provide extra space. At Wrington the extra space could be achieved by either building outwards, or upwards. Likewise Churchill surgery could be expanded – the Churchill Parish Council has said it is willing to extend the lease of the land on which the surgery is built, and it may be willing to lease more land for the extension of the surgery.
Another possible solution arose in informal discussions in which SOS members and two members of the PCT participated after the Friday meeting, this concerned Blagdon and went as follows:
- Many people from Blagdon use the surgery at Wrington. Blagdon used to have a part time surgery of its own. The NHS says all villages should have good access to health care. So why not re-open a surgery in Blagdon on a full time basis in rented accommodation, and move one of the Wrington Doctors there? This would be considerably cheaper than building a new surgery and it would not only free up space in Wrington for the changes that are needed, but provide the people of Blagdon with a surgery that many in Blagdon could visit without getting into a car. For the other services the PCT wants to provide, the new cottage hospital in Clevedon can offer a home.
- And for other private services, such as chiropody, which used to be provided under the NHS, these can be accessed as they currently are with home visits and regular sessions at existing facilities.
The PCT has got it wrong so far, because its so called ‘vision’ has not taken into account the vision of local people, who quite simply want a service that they can access, as they have done for at least the last one hundred years.
The PCT, if it continues on this course, is in danger of enforcing a model of care that the people don’t want. As was said several times by different people during the meeting, “doctors should come to the people, not people to the doctors”, the people are the purpose of the surgery not vice versa.
One local nurse and mother put it very clearly, when she said “If your village surgery is not sacred, what is?”
The Liberal Democrat position is that local people should be involved in making decisions over the running and planning of their health care facilities. The people of Wrington and Churchill are attempting to do this and I feel it my duty to help them in this process.
Thank you.
Dr. Brian Mathew,
Lib Dem PPC North Somerset.
Brian Mathew, addressing the SOS meeting in Wrington. Photo by Bob Bowen
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