A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Council and councillors

Agenda item

PETITIONS, DEPUTATIONS AND QUESTIONS

To receive any petitions, deputations and questions received from Members of the Public in accordance with the provisions of Procedure Rule 216.

 

The total time allowed for this item shall be 30 minutes.  Petitions, declarations and questions shall be dealt with in the order in which they are received.  Questions may also be submitted at short notice by giving a written copy to the Committee Administrator 15 minutes before the start of the meeting.

 

The total time allowed for questions at short notice is 15 minutes out of the total time of 30 minutes.  Any petitions, deputations and questions that have been submitted with prior formal notice will take precedence over questions submitted at short notice.  Any questions that are not considered within the time limit shall receive a written response after the meeting and be the subject of a report to the next meeting.

Minutes:

The Chair reported that a deputation had been received in accordance with the procedure rules set out in the Constitution.

 

Ms Kathy Reynolds, spoke on behalf of Manton residents listed on her request:

 

“We are concerned that scrutiny of this Corporate Plan has come to our attention at such short notice it could not be formally discussed by our Parish Council.   We also question if this is a Corporate Plan, as it looks like a Strategic Plan, it tells us what the Council intends to do, we would expect a Plan to explain how the strategy will be implemented laying out such things as costs, timing with key milestones, risks and mitigations etc. From the report introducing the Corporate Plan by the Chief Executive Of?cer in Paragraph 3 “Consultation”, we learn that so far this report has been formulated, consulted upon and endorsed only within the 5 councillor cabinet assisted by the Strategic Management Team.  Paragraph 10 “Conclusion and Summary” in item 10.1 we are told that adoption of the plan will be on the 11th November does this mean that there is no room to reject the plan or even send it back for modi?cation? And unlike previous Corporate Plans it is not being consulted upon. Now let's take a closer look at the corporate plan for health. Strategic Aim 2.5 gives a single strategic aim for health “work with partners to enhance healthcare within our community”.  Moving to look at strategic objectives we note that there are six strategic objectives within objective 2.5. All of the objectives are general and lack focus, more importantly all are dependent on progress made by others that cannot be controlled by the council, meaning these objectives are no more than a Wish List. Unless Rutland County Council has already agreed to participate in an Integrated Care System (where NHS organisations, in partnership with local councils and others, take collective responsibility for managing resources, delivering NHS standards, and improving the health of the population they serve) it is not clear how RCC will work to deliver any of these healthcare strategic objectives. This is further underlined when we look at the Performance Targets and how success will be measured which surprisingly are limited to 2019/20, there is not one performance target for strategic objectives 2.5 covering healthcare. Is that because it is currently not in council’s gift to deliver any target for healthcare and unless the intention is to form part of an Integrated Care System they cannot deliver the healthcare objectives set out. We hope that discussion at Scrutiny will provide more information and reduce our concerns”.

 

The Chair invited Dr Janet Underwood (Chair of Healthwatch Rutland) to ask the question that had been submitted:

 

 

In reference to page 17, section 2.5, 2nd point

 

·         By March 2021: Work with health partners to resolve issues around GP practice capacity.

Healthwatch Rutland carried out a public engagement exercise asking people about their experiences of NHS services and their hopes and expectations for their future care.  From 233 responses, a strong theme emerging from the data analysis was that of difficulty in getting GP appointments in Rutland.  This is also a comment often passed on to us by Rutland people.  We ask whether this situation, which we recognise as very frustrating, worrying and detrimental to health care, can be addressed as soon as possible and rectified earlier than the stated date of March 2021?

 

In response the Portfolio Holder for Safeguarding – Adults, Public Health, Health Commissioning & Community Safety stated the following:

 

Their work on public engagement had been recognised and he wished to publicly thank them for their hard work and professionalism.

At Rutland County Council and the clinical commissioning group recognise an emerging shortfall of primary care capacity.

The statement within the plan regarding March 2021 is a reference to a specific piece of work that is being assessed for viability which would involve infrastructure changes within Rutland.  This is known as the Hub Project, and is part of the Rutland One Public Estate programme work having been undertaken on the viability of various forms of this hub for about 18 months.

At this time it is not possible to confirm that the viability will be proven, but if it is then March 2021 is in itself already a very challenging date for completion.

In the meantime RCC continues to engage with our local surgeries, notably through the Primary Care Network which has been established (among other things) to increase resilience and enable strategic thinking across the practices.

It was noted that the latest figures suggest Rutland residents visit their surgery on average just shy of 8 times per annum, whereas the average England resident accesses their surgery around 5 times per annum, and health providers may need to do more to understand the reasons for this, which does increase pressures on surgeries.

In was further reported that the patient list at Oakham Medical Practice had remained static at 16,100 for the last five years and efforts would continue to influence capacity in our primary care network. We will not stand in the way of any progress, indeed we are noted regionally for being ahead of the game when it comes to working with partners and finding innovative solutions.

Any reasonable chance of reducing patient waiting times that comes to our attention will be pursued irrespective of the indicated timescale for the Hub project”.