Will you help to monitor Calderdale & Huddersfield drop in sessions on NHS shake-up?

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Plain Speaker is gathering info about how Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Groups carry out their “engagement” process for the Strategic Review/Right Care Right Time Right Place proposals.

This is to see if they are complying with their legal duties to involve the public in decisions about reconfiguring the NHS. If they’re not, there will be grounds for making a legal challenge to the proposed Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS shake up.

Members of the public, patients, staff and members of various NHS organisations have a valuable role to play, in monitoring public events, staff engagement, community groups engagement and NHS networks engagement. For details, see below. Continue reading →

Calderdale Councillors unite in call for NHS Trust to drop A&E downgrade proposals and listen to People’s Panel

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The public seats were full at a Special Council meeting on 16th April, where Councillors unanimously passed a motion calling on Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, Locala and the South West Yorkshire Foundation Partnership Trust to withdraw their Strategic Review/Strategic Outline Case for the future of health and social care in Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield.

The Strategic Review proposals include the preferred option of downgrading Calderdale Royal Hospital A&E and turning the hospital into a small planned care clinic. Continue reading →

Special Council meeting for CHFT Strategic Review motion- bang goes cross-party unity in defence of our NHS

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Hey ho. Politicians, eh? Hopes of cross-party unity in defence of our NHS in Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield have withered faster than a plucked celandine.

First the LibDems and now the Tories have put forward amendments to the original Labour motion. This called on CHFT, Locala and SWYFPT to withdraw their Strategic Review and Strategic Outline Case for the transformation of the NHS and social care, and also called for some kind of Health and Social Care Commission to find out what a decent NHS and social care in the area should be like. Continue reading →

Draft Terms of Reference for Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield People’s Commission of Inquiry into CHFT Strategic Review

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Here are suggested Terms of Reference – what do you all think?

The Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield People’s Commission of Inquiry (hereinafter CHPCI ) shall examine the decision of CHFT,Locala and SWYFPT to issue a Strategic Review and Strategic Outline Case for the transformation of NHS and social care, that includes reducing and downgrading hospital services and replacing them with a cost-cutting system for integrated health and social care in the community that is not evidence based, and the context for this: the fundamental changes being made to the NHS over the last 40 years. Continue reading →

Should People’s commission of inquiry into Strategic Review be task for Band Together For Our NHS?

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I have been having a think about the Labour Party motion to the Special Council meeting at 6pm on Wednesday 16th April, and the recently-announced LibDem amendment.

Imo, a people’s commission of inquiry should be set up by the independent campaign group, Band Together For Our NHS – not by the two councils and clinical commissioning groups, as both Labour and LibDem motions propose. Continue reading →

Conservative Parliamentary Candidate encourages all party support for Council motion on Calderdale A&E

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Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Halifax Philip Allot is encouraging all Calderdale Councillors to support a motion that calls on Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT), Locala and South West Yorkshire Foundation Partnership Trust to:

  • withdraw the proposals set out in their Strategic Outline Case for the future of the NHS and social care in Calderdale and Huddersfield, and in particular the ‘preferred option’
  • enable the two local authorities and the two Clinical Commissioning Groups to lead an open consultation about future health and social care provision in Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield, through establishing a health and care commission to take evidence, lead consultation and produce proposals regarding future health and social care provision across the Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield health and social care “economy”
  • requests Cabinet to take all necessary steps to secure this outcome.

Continue reading →

What’s the rush? Calderdale NHS commissioners go ahead with Strategic Review “Engagement” despite not agreeing the Engagement Plan

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Members of the public were puzzled and cross after attending the April 14th Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body meeting, where it seemed that the NHS commissioners had lost the plot over the Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Strategic Review of the future of the NHS and social care.

Members of the public, including two Calderdale Councillors, attended the meeting to hear answers to questions they had sent to the Governing Body, and to find out about the Commissioners’ Strategic Review Engagement Plan. Continue reading →

Households can now apply for Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive

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The domestic Renewable Heat Incentive is now open and will pay households for renewable heat they generate in their homes.

The payments, over seven years, are to offset the cost of installing low carbon heating systems such as solar thermal, biomass boilers and ground source heat pumps.

The scheme is open home owners, social and private landlords, and people who build their own homes. It is available to households both on and off the gas grid. Continue reading →

NHS financial regulator calls for accelerated NHS “reconfiguration” changes

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Monitor has just told Clinical Commissioning Groups and NHS Trusts to “turbo charge” NHS reconfiguration programmes, such as the Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Strategic Review.

Monitor is the NHS financial regulator responsible for making sure that Clinical Commissioning Groups and other organisations follow Health and Social Care Act 2012 competition regulations – ie put NHS services out to private tender. Continue reading →